"mod the parent down for the logical fallacy of "cities with the most gun crime have the strictest gun control, therefore gun control doesn't work"."
Why is that a logical fallacy? I am simply denying the antecedent of the original argument. The logic behind gun control laws is as follows: IF gun control works, THEN the rate of gun crimes will go down; gun crime rates have NOT gone down, therefore gun control does NOT work.
Is it a simplistic argument? Surely. But the original proposition is just as simplistic. Likewise the simple argument that IF nations restrict hate speech, THEN ethnic or sectarian violence will not occur. But when such violence starts occurring (and it will), do you really believe that the solution is MORE laws?
Thank you for making my point for me. Indeed, high levels of crime "cause" gun control laws, in that politicians pass them in the theoretical belief that they will cause crime to go down (assuming you take what they say at face value). But the laws have not had that effect; crime has only gotten worse. Therefor, by direct observation, gun control laws do NOT lessen crime.
I never said that high levels of crime are caused by gun control laws, only that those laws don't have the effect they are supposed to - that's why I said "not working", not "have the opposite effect."
Likewise, hate speech laws are "caused" by Europe's historical problems with ethnic and sectarian violence, yet they don't seem to be helping the matter, are they?
"I mean, really, do they actually expect people to admit they have knowledge of these sites?"
My guess is that they will have the same problem that the FBI had with some Mafia informants - the informants used the FBI as cover while they continued to do crimes, and the FBI continued to give them a free pass because they were going after "bigger fish".
I can see a pedophile downloading a whole site, reporting it (and not being investigated himself because he is being a good citizen), uploading that haul to a different site as part of a trade, downloading the new stuff, and then report the new site. Continue.
I think the parallel is closer to "gun buyback" programs here in the states - municipalities, under the guise of "getting guns off the street", actually provide a way for criminals to dispose of incriminating evidence, AND GET PAID FOR IT. Many are run under a "no questions asked" policy, and even if they do run a trace and the gun has been involved in a crime, the custody chain is broken - they have no idea who handed it in. Even worse, it creates a safe market for stolen firearms.
Oh, yeah, I can see this plan working out for France real well. Not.
I keep on seeing regulations on "hate speech" and "racial hatred" referenced in Europe, an dwas just struck by the similarity to gun control efforts in the US. Specifically, there is a problem (violent crime/racial tension) with a root cause (poverty and historical discrimination/current discrimination and a history of sectarianism and ethnic pogroms), and the leaders are chasing after the tools (guns/speech) instead of the actors or the causes.
AND NEITHER ARE WORKING! The locations with the highest levels of gun control in the US also have the highest level of violent crime(NYC, DC, Chicago), and the places in Europe with the strictest speech laws have the most trouble with their minorities (Turks in Germany, N. Africans in France). Does anyone who is intellectually honest believe that the problem is that the laws are not strict enough?
And for those who will say that the situations are totally different, because guns kill and words don't, remember that the next time France lets its southern region burn, and this time there are French citizens in the cars. For that matter, talk to the Jews - there are six million fewer of them and I don't think Hitler ever lifted a finger against one. He just spoke and wrote.
Suggestion: take them to a shooting range and hang them from the backstop. Connect them all to a 12v garden battery to get them spinning, and then fire away. Second Amendment FTW!
I not only dated a lawyer, I married one. I was never too worried about a breakup; I could show that she never would have made it through law school without me, so I would be entitled to a sizable portion of her salary.:)
Of course, now that she doesn't practice anymore, I get 100% of her salary.:(
Except that in the last elections, the Democrat was white. I grew up in PA - anyone who thinks that the residents won't vote on race is smoking something. Hell, during the primaries they had white voter saying they were voting for the white candidate in broadcast interviews.
Wrong conclusion; recent history tells us that an impeachment can be beat by political maneuvering, extra-judicial appeals, and the cry of "Politics!"
Pelosi didn't take impeachment off the table; Bill, Hillary, and the Congressional democrats did that 10 years ago when they gathered on the White House lawn to "stand by their man". The more conspiracy minded might say that the Republicans did it on purpose, pursuing weak impeachment charges knowing that it would insulate them against much more criminal acts in the future.
"Cast iron isnt really used as much for anything anymore since steel is much stronger and is almost as cheap."
The drivers of millions of new cars with cast iron engine blocks would disagree with you. CI has many properties that you can't get cheaply with steel.
"law allows for the possibility of the copyright owner to seek reparations, but does not forbid it whatsoever."
So if the law allows me to download songs (i.e. "not forbid it whatsoever"), why should I pay the record companies for a legal act?
You are trying to show a difference in meaning between 2 words where there is none. Whether you use the word "unlawful" or "illegal", downloading is not allowed under the law. The "reparations" associated with that act are damages and penalties, NOT licensing fees - they just happen to be collected by the injured party, not the State. (Note that I disagree with that practice, but it is the law as currently written). Similar to parking ticket - it's not a fee for the parking space, payable to the state. It is a fine for doing something that is not allowed under the law.
On average, YES, it leads to crime, via a multi step process in which there are other factors. The same can be said of poverty, abuse, alcoholism, overbearing mothers, absentee fathers, and being spoiled as a child. It is easily proven that groups with lower income levels, single parent households, and darker skin color commit street crime more frequently; are you willing to say that being black leads to increased criminal behavior? In the final analysis, ALL crime has environmental and social factors involved. Is there no personal responsibility involved at all here?
Also, you need to look up the legal definition of the insanity defense. Mental illness is NOT the same as legally insane, although one could argue that one cannot be legally insane without being mentally ill. But the converse is not true - one can have mental problems and still be legally responsible for one's actions.
Or you could be like my mom: "You'd have to be insane to kill someone". I don't take her seriously, either.
"Brain damaged caused by lead, mercury, fluoride and other chemicals do far more to increase crime rates than music and video games."
Fluoride? As in, "Precious bodily fluids" fluoride?
"the theory that lead poisoning causes crime is hard science."
I think you need to look up what "hard science" really means - physics, chemistry, and the like. The "soft sciences" are biology, sociology, medicine, economics (oops - that's the dismal science). Basically, anything where results are largely expressed statistically. There may be a strong correlation, but "cause" is a reach. From the articles you linked to, lead levels are associated with aggressive behavior - not crimes in and of themselves. It is how the individual, families, and institutions deal with those tendencies that make criminals.
Another reason Reformation is given short shrift is that we havent' had a lot of luck with it in the US, and that goes back WAYYY before the War of Drugs, etc.
The OP was complaining about how he wanted features for his signature; I offered an example in my own experience where such behavior causes other people problems. Why should I bother with chapter and verse?
Are you saying that the OP's behavior in writing HTML and image heavy sigs would be perfectly acceptable as long as no one complained about it?
You must be hell to have a relationship with - all behavior is fine unless it draws a complaint. Nice life if you can get it.
"You make it sound like no one else in the world votes for other local offices!"
I guess you missed where I said:"And in local elections, the same. So they have 5 different choices of party for 2, perhaps 3 offices."
At the national level, I vote for 4 different offices; on the state level, 5 or more, and on the local level, upwards of a dozen. That's in toto, not on any given election day. How many offices TOTAL do you get to vote for?
Oh, yeah - and I get to vote for who my party's candidate will BE in those elections; how did the Labour decide who John Major's successor as PM should be?
Kissinger got the peace prize for ending the Vietnam war - except it was still going on when he was presented it.
Mahatma Ghandi was denied the peace prize repeatedly.
You are using the Nobel as evidence of the SCIENTIFIC validity of Global warming, except it wasn't recognized by any of the scientific committees - rather, a political committee decided it. They believed that Gore's work was a great contributor to world peace. That's fine, but it says nothing to convince those that may be skeptics about the scientific validity of Global Warming.
From Wikipedia: "The Nobel Peace Prize has sparked controversy throughout its history. The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Peace Prize Committee, but pacifist critics argue that the same Parliament has pursued partisan military aims by ratifying membership in NATO in 1949, by hosting NATO troops, and by leasing ports and territorial waters to US ballistic missile submarines in 1983. However, the Parliament has no say in the award issue. A member of the Committee cannot at the same time be a member of the Parliament, and the Committee includes former members from all major parties, including those parties that oppose NATO membership
A particular claimed weakness of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding process is the swiftness of recognition. The scientific and literary Nobel Prizes are usually issued in retrospect, often two or three decades after the awarded achievement, thus representing a time-proven confirmation and balance of approval by the established academic community, seldom contradicted by newer developments. In contrast, the Nobel Peace Prize at times takes the form of summary judgment, being issued in the same year as or the year immediately following the political act. Some commentators have suggested that to award a peace prize on the basis of unquantifiable contemporary opinion is unjust or possibly erroneous, especially as many of the judges cannot themselves be said to be impartial observers. In pro-democracy struggles, it may be said that the 'real' peace-makers may not be recognized for their long-term or subtle approaches. However, others have pointed to the uniqueness of the Peace Prize in that its high profile can often focus world attention on particular problems and possibly aid in the peace-efforts themselves. The 14th Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu, 2004 The 14th Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu, 2004
On closer inspection, the peace-laureates often have a lifetime's history of working at and promoting humanitarian issues, as in the examples of German medic Albert Schweitzer (1952 laureate), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an African-American civil rights activist (1964 laureate); Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic missionary nun (1979 laureate); and Aung San Suu Kyi, a Buddhist nonviolent pro-democracy activist (1991 laureate). Still others are selected for tireless efforts, as in the examples of Jimmy Carter and Mohamed ElBaradei. Others, even today, are quite controversial, due to the recipient's political activity, as in the case of Henry Kissinger (1973 laureate), Tenzin Gyatso (1989), Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat (1978 laureates), or Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat (1994 laureates).
A widely discussed criticism of the peace-prize are the notable omissions, namely the failure to award individuals with widely recognized contributions to peace. The list includes Mahatma Gandhi, Corazon Aquino, Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, Steve Biko, Raphael Lemkin, Herbert Hoover, Abdul Sattar Edhi, César Chávez, Jose Figueres Ferrer, and Oscar Romero. In particular, the omission of the Indian leader Gandhi has been widely discussed, including public statements by the various members of Nobel Committee.[9][10] It has been acknowledged by the committee that Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948. The omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee.[9] In 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, the Nobel Committ
"If this continues far enough, it may reduce the salinity of the north Atlantic to the point that the oceanic conveyor shuts down; If this happens, Europe freezes."
I thought you were OPPOSED to global warming; so far, it's a positive.
"science has got the 'facts'. the highest award that scientists give, a nobel prize, have been given to the global warming researchers. nobel committee consist of top of the field, topmost of the top, top of the flock (insert whatever here) scientists, and they dont give out any prizes to doubtable stuff."
Regardless of the reality of global warming, looking to that Nobel Prize as an imprimatur on Global Warming is ludicrous. First, it was the PEACE prize, not a scientific prize, and was awarded by a committee of the Swedish Parliament. Secondt, the Nobel committee broke their own rules in awarding it to more than 3 individuals.
The Peace prize has a long, storied history of being a politically motivated piece of crap; the fact that this time the politics revolved around a scientific topic doesn't make the Swedish Parliament experts at climatology any more than Al Gore became a climatologist after loosing the presidential election.
How did you gather that we never said anything? We complained to the secretary - she forgot. We complained to her/our boss - he told her, she forgot. They eventually got the message (and we all got broadband to the jobsites), but you act like somehow a dysfunctional organization excuses careless personal behavior. While my organization had problems dealing with the behavior, if the secretaries had used their brains the organization would not have had to deal with it at all.
Slashdot Mirror
"mod the parent down for the logical fallacy of "cities with the most gun crime have the strictest gun control, therefore gun control doesn't work"."
Why is that a logical fallacy? I am simply denying the antecedent of the original argument. The logic behind gun control laws is as follows: IF gun control works, THEN the rate of gun crimes will go down; gun crime rates have NOT gone down, therefore gun control does NOT work.
Is it a simplistic argument? Surely. But the original proposition is just as simplistic. Likewise the simple argument that IF nations restrict hate speech, THEN ethnic or sectarian violence will not occur. But when such violence starts occurring (and it will), do you really believe that the solution is MORE laws?
Thank you for making my point for me. Indeed, high levels of crime "cause" gun control laws, in that politicians pass them in the theoretical belief that they will cause crime to go down (assuming you take what they say at face value). But the laws have not had that effect; crime has only gotten worse. Therefor, by direct observation, gun control laws do NOT lessen crime.
I never said that high levels of crime are caused by gun control laws, only that those laws don't have the effect they are supposed to - that's why I said "not working", not "have the opposite effect."
Likewise, hate speech laws are "caused" by Europe's historical problems with ethnic and sectarian violence, yet they don't seem to be helping the matter, are they?
"I mean, really, do they actually expect people to admit they have knowledge of these sites?"
My guess is that they will have the same problem that the FBI had with some Mafia informants - the informants used the FBI as cover while they continued to do crimes, and the FBI continued to give them a free pass because they were going after "bigger fish".
I can see a pedophile downloading a whole site, reporting it (and not being investigated himself because he is being a good citizen), uploading that haul to a different site as part of a trade, downloading the new stuff, and then report the new site. Continue.
I think the parallel is closer to "gun buyback" programs here in the states - municipalities, under the guise of "getting guns off the street", actually provide a way for criminals to dispose of incriminating evidence, AND GET PAID FOR IT. Many are run under a "no questions asked" policy, and even if they do run a trace and the gun has been involved in a crime, the custody chain is broken - they have no idea who handed it in. Even worse, it creates a safe market for stolen firearms.
Oh, yeah, I can see this plan working out for France real well. Not.
I keep on seeing regulations on "hate speech" and "racial hatred" referenced in Europe, an dwas just struck by the similarity to gun control efforts in the US. Specifically, there is a problem (violent crime/racial tension) with a root cause (poverty and historical discrimination/current discrimination and a history of sectarianism and ethnic pogroms), and the leaders are chasing after the tools (guns/speech) instead of the actors or the causes.
AND NEITHER ARE WORKING! The locations with the highest levels of gun control in the US also have the highest level of violent crime(NYC, DC, Chicago), and the places in Europe with the strictest speech laws have the most trouble with their minorities (Turks in Germany, N. Africans in France). Does anyone who is intellectually honest believe that the problem is that the laws are not strict enough?
And for those who will say that the situations are totally different, because guns kill and words don't, remember that the next time France lets its southern region burn, and this time there are French citizens in the cars. For that matter, talk to the Jews - there are six million fewer of them and I don't think Hitler ever lifted a finger against one. He just spoke and wrote.
That would be Appeal to Authority.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority
"Destroy them."
Suggestion: take them to a shooting range and hang them from the backstop. Connect them all to a 12v garden battery to get them spinning, and then fire away. Second Amendment FTW!
I not only dated a lawyer, I married one. I was never too worried about a breakup; I could show that she never would have made it through law school without me, so I would be entitled to a sizable portion of her salary. :)
:(
Of course, now that she doesn't practice anymore, I get 100% of her salary.
Except that in the last elections, the Democrat was white. I grew up in PA - anyone who thinks that the residents won't vote on race is smoking something. Hell, during the primaries they had white voter saying they were voting for the white candidate in broadcast interviews.
Wrong conclusion; recent history tells us that an impeachment can be beat by political maneuvering, extra-judicial appeals, and the cry of "Politics!"
Pelosi didn't take impeachment off the table; Bill, Hillary, and the Congressional democrats did that 10 years ago when they gathered on the White House lawn to "stand by their man". The more conspiracy minded might say that the Republicans did it on purpose, pursuing weak impeachment charges knowing that it would insulate them against much more criminal acts in the future.
Good luck with that.
"Bad sex?
What kind is that?"
The kind where I'm not having it.
That is a good point, which someone below made. Indeed, it is distributing that is illegal, and "sharing" is where it gets murky.
In my defense, I was responding to the OP who got confused as well.
"Cast iron isnt really used as much for anything anymore since steel is much stronger and is almost as cheap."
The drivers of millions of new cars with cast iron engine blocks would disagree with you. CI has many properties that you can't get cheaply with steel.
"law allows for the possibility of the copyright owner to seek reparations, but does not forbid it whatsoever."
So if the law allows me to download songs (i.e. "not forbid it whatsoever"), why should I pay the record companies for a legal act?
You are trying to show a difference in meaning between 2 words where there is none. Whether you use the word "unlawful" or "illegal", downloading is not allowed under the law. The "reparations" associated with that act are damages and penalties, NOT licensing fees - they just happen to be collected by the injured party, not the State. (Note that I disagree with that practice, but it is the law as currently written). Similar to parking ticket - it's not a fee for the parking space, payable to the state. It is a fine for doing something that is not allowed under the law.
On average, YES, it leads to crime, via a multi step process in which there are other factors. The same can be said of poverty, abuse, alcoholism, overbearing mothers, absentee fathers, and being spoiled as a child. It is easily proven that groups with lower income levels, single parent households, and darker skin color commit street crime more frequently; are you willing to say that being black leads to increased criminal behavior? In the final analysis, ALL crime has environmental and social factors involved. Is there no personal responsibility involved at all here?
Also, you need to look up the legal definition of the insanity defense. Mental illness is NOT the same as legally insane, although one could argue that one cannot be legally insane without being mentally ill. But the converse is not true - one can have mental problems and still be legally responsible for one's actions.
Or you could be like my mom: "You'd have to be insane to kill someone". I don't take her seriously, either.
"Brain damaged caused by lead, mercury, fluoride and other chemicals do far more to increase crime rates than music and video games."
Fluoride? As in, "Precious bodily fluids" fluoride?
"the theory that lead poisoning causes crime is hard science."
I think you need to look up what "hard science" really means - physics, chemistry, and the like. The "soft sciences" are biology, sociology, medicine, economics (oops - that's the dismal science). Basically, anything where results are largely expressed statistically. There may be a strong correlation, but "cause" is a reach. From the articles you linked to, lead levels are associated with aggressive behavior - not crimes in and of themselves. It is how the individual, families, and institutions deal with those tendencies that make criminals.
Another reason Reformation is given short shrift is that we havent' had a lot of luck with it in the US, and that goes back WAYYY before the War of Drugs, etc.
The OP was complaining about how he wanted features for his signature; I offered an example in my own experience where such behavior causes other people problems. Why should I bother with chapter and verse?
Are you saying that the OP's behavior in writing HTML and image heavy sigs would be perfectly acceptable as long as no one complained about it?
You must be hell to have a relationship with - all behavior is fine unless it draws a complaint. Nice life if you can get it.
"You make it sound like no one else in the world votes for other local offices!"
:"And in local elections, the same. So they have 5 different choices of party for 2, perhaps 3 offices."
I guess you missed where I said
At the national level, I vote for 4 different offices; on the state level, 5 or more, and on the local level, upwards of a dozen. That's in toto, not on any given election day. How many offices TOTAL do you get to vote for?
Oh, yeah - and I get to vote for who my party's candidate will BE in those elections; how did the Labour decide who John Major's successor as PM should be?
For those who have never left their mother's basement, the internet IS the only way.
Of course, if a pasty geek in a basement screams "Oppression", does it really make a sound? Or, does anyone care?
Kissinger got the peace prize for ending the Vietnam war - except it was still going on when he was presented it.
Mahatma Ghandi was denied the peace prize repeatedly.
You are using the Nobel as evidence of the SCIENTIFIC validity of Global warming, except it wasn't recognized by any of the scientific committees - rather, a political committee decided it. They believed that Gore's work was a great contributor to world peace. That's fine, but it says nothing to convince those that may be skeptics about the scientific validity of Global Warming.
From Wikipedia:
"The Nobel Peace Prize has sparked controversy throughout its history. The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Peace Prize Committee, but pacifist critics argue that the same Parliament has pursued partisan military aims by ratifying membership in NATO in 1949, by hosting NATO troops, and by leasing ports and territorial waters to US ballistic missile submarines in 1983. However, the Parliament has no say in the award issue. A member of the Committee cannot at the same time be a member of the Parliament, and the Committee includes former members from all major parties, including those parties that oppose NATO membership
A particular claimed weakness of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding process is the swiftness of recognition. The scientific and literary Nobel Prizes are usually issued in retrospect, often two or three decades after the awarded achievement, thus representing a time-proven confirmation and balance of approval by the established academic community, seldom contradicted by newer developments. In contrast, the Nobel Peace Prize at times takes the form of summary judgment, being issued in the same year as or the year immediately following the political act. Some commentators have suggested that to award a peace prize on the basis of unquantifiable contemporary opinion is unjust or possibly erroneous, especially as many of the judges cannot themselves be said to be impartial observers. In pro-democracy struggles, it may be said that the 'real' peace-makers may not be recognized for their long-term or subtle approaches. However, others have pointed to the uniqueness of the Peace Prize in that its high profile can often focus world attention on particular problems and possibly aid in the peace-efforts themselves.
The 14th Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu, 2004
The 14th Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu, 2004
On closer inspection, the peace-laureates often have a lifetime's history of working at and promoting humanitarian issues, as in the examples of German medic Albert Schweitzer (1952 laureate), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an African-American civil rights activist (1964 laureate); Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic missionary nun (1979 laureate); and Aung San Suu Kyi, a Buddhist nonviolent pro-democracy activist (1991 laureate). Still others are selected for tireless efforts, as in the examples of Jimmy Carter and Mohamed ElBaradei. Others, even today, are quite controversial, due to the recipient's political activity, as in the case of Henry Kissinger (1973 laureate), Tenzin Gyatso (1989), Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat (1978 laureates), or Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat (1994 laureates).
A widely discussed criticism of the peace-prize are the notable omissions, namely the failure to award individuals with widely recognized contributions to peace. The list includes Mahatma Gandhi, Corazon Aquino, Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, Steve Biko, Raphael Lemkin, Herbert Hoover, Abdul Sattar Edhi, César Chávez, Jose Figueres Ferrer, and Oscar Romero. In particular, the omission of the Indian leader Gandhi has been widely discussed, including public statements by the various members of Nobel Committee.[9][10] It has been acknowledged by the committee that Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948. The omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee.[9] In 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, the Nobel Committ
"I hope this thread has minimal snarky sarcastic comments, this is just sad all around."
Where's the "Good luck with that" mod when you need it?
"his wife was seeing, a guy that *claimed to have* murdered several people."
Fixed that for ya.
"If this continues far enough, it may reduce the salinity of the north Atlantic to the point that the oceanic conveyor shuts down; If this happens, Europe freezes."
I thought you were OPPOSED to global warming; so far, it's a positive.
"science has got the 'facts'. the highest award that scientists give, a nobel prize, have been given to the global warming researchers. nobel committee consist of top of the field, topmost of the top, top of the flock (insert whatever here) scientists, and they dont give out any prizes to doubtable stuff."
Regardless of the reality of global warming, looking to that Nobel Prize as an imprimatur on Global Warming is ludicrous. First, it was the PEACE prize, not a scientific prize, and was awarded by a committee of the Swedish Parliament. Secondt, the Nobel committee broke their own rules in awarding it to more than 3 individuals.
The Peace prize has a long, storied history of being a politically motivated piece of crap; the fact that this time the politics revolved around a scientific topic doesn't make the Swedish Parliament experts at climatology any more than Al Gore became a climatologist after loosing the presidential election.
How did you gather that we never said anything? We complained to the secretary - she forgot. We complained to her/our boss - he told her, she forgot. They eventually got the message (and we all got broadband to the jobsites), but you act like somehow a dysfunctional organization excuses careless personal behavior. While my organization had problems dealing with the behavior, if the secretaries had used their brains the organization would not have had to deal with it at all.