The most effective way to prevent this sort of thing is make sure one party doesn't control the House, Senate, and White House at once, as the Republicans do now. It wouldn't be significantly better if the Democrats controlled all three, what we need is at least one of the three to be controlled by an opposing party. That's the only way to prevent such out-of-the-sunshine legislation.
It would also help if the two parties weren't so chummy.
Remember, XOR is used for one time pads, the strongest form of encryption.
XOR against a passphrase is weak.
XOR against a repeating secure (irreversible) hash of the password is technically weak but in practice very strong unless the message is dozens of times longer than the hash.
XOR against a successive concatination of secure hashes is strong, fast, and simple. There is no reason to believe 3DES is any stronger. Plus, it's the same algorithm for encrypting and decrypting. Pseudocode:
secureXOR(input[], key):
pad = SecureHash(key);/* e.g. MD5 or SHA[1-n] */
length = LengthOf(SecureHash);/* e.g. 128 for MD5 */
All this added security means longer lines in the unsecure areas, where people are always temporarily abandoning their big carts of luggage. It would be extrordinarily easy to suitcase-bomb large airport crouds these days.
1. Maybe, but don't get your hopes up.
2. RSA Labs
Rivest published MD5 in 1991, but he probably wants to sell some newfangled proprietary alternative that RSA already has patented. Tell them you have a collision, and that you want to offer it for a price, and ask how much they would be willing to pay.
The sad fact is that you'll probably not be offered more than a thousand since your collision was discovered by accident. If you had a method, though, the NSA might want to add three zeros to that.
... the Supreme Court would have ruled in favor of the nude dancers.
They didn't rule against the erotic dancing, the protected expression, just the complete nudity, requiring pasties and g-strings as the minimum infringement necessary to promote the compelling government interest, which in Erie was given as the prevention of public urination. This is where I think the Court just drops all but the pretense of legal reasoning and says whatever they want. After all, presumably the Erie dancers had access to a restroom, so the compelling interest of keeping them from urinating on stage isn't any more infringed by nudity than g-strings, even if the're hoplessly incontinent.
But anyway, that's why several messages ago I pointed out that the legislator's intent is so important in these cases.
The point can be made that the demand to publish pictures of women with pasties and g-strings is nothing like the market for pictures of fully nude women. So, outlawing public nudity entirely is more than the minimum amount possible to uphold whatever the compelling interest is, given that the alternative is to allow full nudity when steps are taken to prevent members of the public from viewing the appearance of nudity.
By the way, I wonder whether a T-shirt with printed breasts depicted would count as "appearing nude" without actually being nude. Not that that has any bearing.
[Publishing and performance]
have the same Constitutional protections.
Well, I guess you're playing devil's advocate. If that were true, the Court would have ruled in favor of the nude dancers, since publishing videotapes of such dancing is clearly protected in the same jursidiction.
We cannot accept the view that an apparently limitless variety of conduct can be labeled "speech" whenever the person engaging in the conduct intends thereby to express an idea.
[391 U.S. 367, 377]
Whatever you think of the pertinence of the California porn movie case, the fact remains that paying someone for sex is illegal unless that sex is being photographed, because of the first amendment protections involved.
Similarly, I think it's very likely that where being nude in public is illegal, if there's a camara involved and resonable precautions of the compelling government interest of the ordinance, then that becomes a protected expression.
Flashing someone in a bar has significantly less social/artistic value than does theater.
That's a matter of purely subjective opinion, and in fact an opinion of "social/artistic" content, not a standard of conduct. The law is not allowed to regulate the content of a theater performance or photo shoot, based on anyone's opinion of what is or is not more artistic.
... The assertion of the city's counsel in the trial court that the ordinance would not cover theatrical productions to the extent their expressive activity rose to a higher level of protected expression simply meant that the ordinance would not be enforceable against such productions if the Constitution forbade it....
My point exactly -- the purpose of the public nudity was to publish photography, which is a protected form of first amendment exression. If she was just flashing people to get their phone numbers or something, she could claim no such protections.
no significant burden placed on the First Amendment rights of the defendant, just like the court ruled the dancers in the bar in Erie had no significant First Amendment rights
It's not like that at all; the dancers in Erie were nude not for the purposes of publishing, but performance, which is much further from protected expression than publishing.
This distinction is tremendously important. One might consider visiting a prostitute to be a form of entertainment, but as such it doesn't enjoy any kind of first amendment protections. Put a camera in the room and that all changes. According to the California Supreme Court, "[E]ven if Defendant's conduct could somehow be found to come within the definition of 'prostitution' literally, the application of the pandering statute to the hiring of actors to perform in the production of a non-obscene motion picture would impinge unconstitutionally on First Amendment values." An appeal of that decision to the United States Supreme Court was denied review.
the government's interest is that someone *might* see it because it is in public
And that interest has to be balanced against the suspect's protected right to create photographs of her body in any environment for publication, by a judge and/or jury, not us.
IBM has a vested interest in seeing this lawsuit through to the end and making sure SCO is crushed into a fine-grained dust
IBM could hardly care less about SCO's fate. What is at issue here to IBM is the far more important issue of their software systems' legitimacy in the eyes of the market. SCO has done far more damage to that reputation than anything Microsoft could ever dream of, given their position as a clear competitor to both IBM and SCO. Since SCO/Caldera was very much a Linux company, their FUD rumors have had a tremendous chilling effect.
Now, there is no way to undo that damage with a settlement, as far as I or anyone I've read on Groklaw can tell. Even if SCO admits egregious errors in public, without a clear ruling from a judge and/or jury on the issues of IBM's rightful ownership of their e.g. AIX code, all of IBM's competitors will forever be able to twist the knife in their back. It no longer matters what SCO says or does, because their credibility is only intact with their own investors at this point. IBM, on the other hand, needs to clear their name.
IBM will not settle for anything less than complete victory.
... if someone's right to free speech were abridged, the government would need to show that there is a government interest in that. But that is not at all difficult for public nudity laws, which are far more often upheld and enforced than struck down
I'm not so sure about that. Plenty of modern theater contains nudity, even some of which has played in Nebraska, maybe even Lincoln. All you need is one performance of "Hair" or "Oh! Calcutta!" unharrassed by police to show selective prosecution. I used to live in Nebraska, and their community standards are nowhere near, say, rural Tennessee. Scotts Bluff, Nebraska has corner porn+liquor stores and porn cable in their hotels just like everywhere from Chicago to Salt Lake City to Dallas.
Anyway, a little research shows that the particular application of Lincoln's ordinance in this case is almost certainly unconsitutional, even if the ordinance on its face is not. From Erie v. Pap's A. M. [529 U.S. 277, 289 (2000)]:
[G]overnment restrictions on public nudity such as
the ordinance at issue here should be evaluated under the
framework set forth in
[United States v.] O'Brien [391 U.S. 367 (1968)], for content-neutral restrictions on symbolic speech. That test provides that
a government regulation is sufficiently
justified if
(1) it is within the constitutional
power of the Government; if
(2) it furthers an
important or substantial governmental
interest; if
(3) the governmental interest is
unrelated to the suppression of free
expression; and if
(4) the incidental
restriction on alleged First Amendment
freedoms is no greater than is essential to
the furtherance of that interest.
O'Brien [391 U.S. at 377].
When the government prosecutes public nudity for any "compelling interest" against someone nude for the sole purpose of publishing photography, that runs afowl of prong (3), that "the governmental interest
must be unrelated to the suppression of free expression."
Barnes, [501 U.S. at 570] and prong (4) of O'Brien, especially since in this case there are apparently no complaining or known witnesses unacquainted with the subject, which is to say, those members of the public which the ordinance was designed to "protect."
So, clearly, the unconstitutionality of the ordinance as applied in this case is a real possibility, while we agree that the the constitutionality of the law on its face is not an issue. Perhaps that poster far above doubting the constitutionality has collected more box-tops for his law degree than you have suspected.
Negligence and recklessness presuppose that you are doing something you know you shouldn't
Well, for recklessness you're right, but sober people with clean records who get in nasty fatal automobile accidents are convicted of criminal involuntary manslaughter all the time. I don't think juries confuse slow reflexes, which they are fairly eager to punish, with guilty knowledge. Industrial penny-pinchers who make a considered decision on the wrong side of safety often face criminal negligence charges. They don't know they were doing something wrong until after the fact.
The statute makes not a single reference to being observed, witnessed, or causing offense. It simply talks about being nude in public, and knowing/intending to be in that state.
On the contrary, have another look at Lincoln Municipal Code Section 9.16.230: "It shall be unlawful for a person to, knowingly or intentionally, in a public place or in any place open to the public, appear in a state of nudity.
The law does not forbid simply being nude (e.g., as one might change clothes in a secluded yet public spot), but actually requir
However, the government, if faced with an unconstitutionality claim, will have to state exactly what the compelling interest of the law is
That's an interesting fiction.:-) Yes, of course, we often hope that it is such. But in practice, it often isn't
If the defense challenges the constitutionality of a law, it's the prosecution's burden to show the law is constitutional. That means that unless they can quote a case in which the law was shown constitutional under a similar challenge, that they have to, among other things, state what the compelling government interest in the law is. Often this means simply pulling the legislative record, i.e., the city council minutes, and summarizing what the legislators were considering preventing. If they do find a similar challenge holding the law's constitutionality, that case will state the compelling government interest in the law.
The "injury" presupposed by the crime of public nudity is almost always "shock" and/or "offense." (Indiana tried to find a way around this, and in doing so outlawed nudity in theatrical performances including even R-rated movies, before the Supreme Court overturned them.)
The importance of the "compelling government interest" in the law, which is to say its purpose, is because if you have a law forbidding X in order to to prevent Y, then you can't be convicted of X, even if it was knowing and intentional X, if you have taken effective steps to prevent Y. For example, even if your town has a leash law, you don't need a leash on a dog being carted around in a cage.
I think you are getting hung up on "malice." If you mean "malice aforethought" in the sense of premeditation to cause harm to someone, then no, there is absolutely no need for the prosecution to prove this. This statute does not require that sort of malice, let alone premeditation of it. Only intent to be nude in public is necessary for conviction, not intent to harm anyone.
The concept that a "moral" crime requires scienter, or mens rea, is an idea "deeply entrenched" in American criminal law [Joshua Dressler, Understanding Criminal Law sec. 10.01 (1987)]. The Supreme Court strongly expressed that notion in the 1952 case of Morisette v. United States [342 U.S. 246]; Justice Jackson wrote:
The contention that an injury can amount to a crime only when inflicted by intention is no provincial or transient notion. It is as universal and persistent in mature systems of law as belief in the freedom of the human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose between good and evil.
--Id. at 250.
If we were to follow that route, then any act that did not harm anyone else would be legal. I could -- as noted previously -- shoot a gun in public as much as I wanted to, as long as I didn't hit anyone.
No, that would be criminal negligence, reckless endangerment, creation of a hazard, and breach of peace. Whether you hit anyone or not doesn't mean that you didn't put people in danger, either directly because you might accidentally hit someone, or indirectly because they might get hurt while panicing and diving for cover. Convictions for negligence, recklessness, etc., even parking over a time limit, don't require a showing of scienter; crimes involving "moral wrongs" do. So, although the prosecution wouldn't have to show scienter for negligence for conviction, they would and could to convict you of reckless endangerment, creation of a hazard, and breaching the peace.
The ordinance in this case, which forbids "knowingly or intentionally" being nude in public, explicit
Doesn't that mean it's an arrestable offense to pop wood in public?!?
In order to be arrested, you must "knowingly or intentionally" "show" your woody in a "discernably turgid" state. This gives you a few ways around the charge.
1. You can claim lack of knowledge and intention. "Your honor, I had no idea I was turgid." I think it is highly unlikely that the prosecution could effectively counter this without spending a whole lot of money, but the jury might not buy it.
2. You can cover your woody with whatever is handy. Presumably a book or backpack would draw less attention than using your hands alone, which might put you in a different "lewd act" category of trouble.
3. You can immediatly remove your socks, stuff them down your pants aside your woody, preventing the discernability of your turgidity.
The determination is in the details. Ms. "Lincoln" is charged with a violation of Lincoln Municipal Code Section 9.16.230, which reads:
9.16.230 Public Nudity; Unlawful.
(a) It shall be unlawful for a person to, knowingly or intentionally, in a public place or in
any place open to the public, appear in a state of nudity.
(b) 'Nudity' means the showing of the human male or female genitals or pubic area with
less than a fully opaque covering, the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque
covering on any part of the areola and nipple, or the showing of covered male genitals in a discernibly
turgid state.
(c) This section shall not apply to:
(1) Any theater, concert hall, art center, museum, or similar establishment which
is primarily devoted to the arts or theatrical performances and in which any of the circumstances
contained in this section were permitted or allowed as part of such art exhibit or performance;
(2) Any dressing/changing room or restroom facility open to the public;
(3) Any person under twelve years of age; or
(4) Mothers who are breast feeding.
So, given part (c), she probably doesn't have the selective enforcement hook that the linked Virginia case turned on, other than the male/female topless selectivity thing that worked in Canada last year.
However, the government, if faced with an unconstitutionality claim, will have to state exactly what the compelling interest of the law is, and almost certainly it will be the same common law opposition to public nudity that is supposed to prevent people from being "shocked and offended." (Or driven mad with lacivious rage, or whatever.)
Now, for a conviction of a crime of intent (i.e., other than some kind of neglegence), scienter or "malice aforethought" must be proven. The defense in this case will almost certainly be able to prove an absence of malice, unless the procecution can produce a member of the public that observed the conduct depicted in the photographs and swears under penalty of purjury that they were shocked and/or offended. (With those breasts, I'm guessing you'd want a male for shocked and a female for offended.) The prosecution must also prove that the suspect was aware of the witness, or at least of the possibility of the witness's presence. The defense can counter with the likely fact, likely supported by witnesses, that (1) the indoor flashing was for a very brief period of time, and (2) the outdoor flashing was during a private party from which witnesses were being excluded.
In short, the prosecution has to prove, at the "beyond a reasonable doubt" level, that she was reckless about whether someone would be offended, which is not going to be easy.
What, exactly, in the constitution do you find to prevent a state from passing laws against public nudity?
For the topless-only pictures involved, it's the due process clause, in particular selective enforcement, in that guys can go topless and girls can't.
Hey, don't look at me. It worked in Canada! Different constitution, but the exact same argument.
Anyway, laws prohibiting public nudity are frequently ruled unconstitutional as soon as some D.A. tries to enforce them, e.g. this case allowing erotic dancing in Virginia. That turned on, among other things, selective enforcement vis-a-vis nursing mothers. The details of the law are what make the real difference.
Is that price drop because of government intervention?
No, it's the unsubsidized cost due almost entirely to the fact that turbines have gone from noisy, inefficient 200 kW units to silent, efficient Danish designs producing 2-3 MW each, on the same footprint and essentially the same material costs.
The irony is that the European countries who were early adopters of the old creaky turbines are getting poor returns on their existing investments. I've read that we'll see 4 MW turbines any day now, and that there's still plenty of room for efficiency improvements and mass production economic benefits. I often wonder if a lot of the (U.S., again, sorry) energy policy that seems focused on coal and gas might very well be just a very shrewd biding of time until wind finally reaches that magic cheaper-than-coal price point.
When that happens, whether in 2005 or 2008, all of the sudden every farmer in the windy part of everywhere is going to lease their fields full of turbines, and the coal industry is going to be in for a real shock.
The best option right now is sadly still coal, despite the high pollution output (both noxious and radioactive). Second best option is gas. The third best option is a coin-toss between nuclear and wind.
You obviously haven't checked the cost of natural gas lately, which is running about 9 cents/kwh this winter, up from 5 cents a few years ago. The unsubsidized cost of nuclear is even more, from 11 cents/kwh to as much as 50 cents/kwh depending on which government is covering the insurance involved (search on "Price-Anderson" to get the U.S. story.)
That leaves wind vs. coal, which in the U.S. generally sells for 1.5 cents/kwh (note if we had the anti-mercury pollution controls that are in place in Europe, coal would be about 3 cents/kwh.)
So, have a look at wind. Back in '98, wind cost 10 cents/kwh, but just five years later, it's wholesaleing in the U.S. for around 2 cents/kwh, and the price is continuing to fall, driven almost entirely by efficiency and other engineering improvements made to turbines (most of that work is done in Denmark, at Vestas.) It won't be long until U.S. wind beats the price of our dirtiest coal. Accordingly the wind industry is growing very quickly in the U.S.; at about 50% annually in revenue terms.
[Altamont Pass is]
in a migratory flight path and other wind projects did not have the same problem.
That is true, but the problem is solved primarily because the new, larger capacity turbines spin quite a bit slower, while the 30-year-old Altimont Pass turbines are fast and dangerous (and rather loud, too.) Once the Altamont Pass turbines are replaced (over the next fifteen years) they expect raptor kills to decline to as few as five or ten per year, IIRC.
Also, people forget that ordinary housecats kill between 200 and 300 million birds per year (not raptors, granted.)
Please respect copyright by not posting the full text of articles.... It should be up to the Times to decide.
On the contrary, Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 has repeatedly been held to allow news articles to be redistributed in full for noncommercial and many commercial purposes without permission from the copyright holder. Such 'fair use' of copyrighted material for "criticism, comment, news reporting,... or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
Complete news articles have always been recognized as exempt under the 'fair use doctrine' for noncommercial redistribution, as well as limited commercial uses, since long before Section 107 was codified.
Slashdot Mirror
5. if (ptr > sizeof(input)) return(output[]) else ptr += length;
It would also help if the two parties weren't so chummy.
Oh, to have gridlock again.
XOR against a passphrase is weak.
XOR against a repeating secure (irreversible) hash of the password is technically weak but in practice very strong unless the message is dozens of times longer than the hash.
XOR against a successive concatination of secure hashes is strong, fast, and simple. There is no reason to believe 3DES is any stronger. Plus, it's the same algorithm for encrypting and decrypting. Pseudocode:
This thread might also explain the popularity of mind-altering drugs among amature theoretical physicists.
All this added security means longer lines in the unsecure areas, where people are always temporarily abandoning their big carts of luggage. It would be extrordinarily easy to suitcase-bomb large airport crouds these days.
Except with a reliable, recurring revenue stream, instead of only a few hopeful licensing deals with some Fortune 500 companies.
I would be suprized if any of the salespeople noticed.
Huh? As if it hasn't been already effectivly forked by the NSA, TiVo, etc.
Cringely posting statistics confirm: *Linux is growing or dying
2. RSA Labs
Rivest published MD5 in 1991, but he probably wants to sell some newfangled proprietary alternative that RSA already has patented. Tell them you have a collision, and that you want to offer it for a price, and ask how much they would be willing to pay.
The sad fact is that you'll probably not be offered more than a thousand since your collision was discovered by accident. If you had a method, though, the NSA might want to add three zeros to that.
They didn't rule against the erotic dancing, the protected expression, just the complete nudity, requiring pasties and g-strings as the minimum infringement necessary to promote the compelling government interest, which in Erie was given as the prevention of public urination. This is where I think the Court just drops all but the pretense of legal reasoning and says whatever they want. After all, presumably the Erie dancers had access to a restroom, so the compelling interest of keeping them from urinating on stage isn't any more infringed by nudity than g-strings, even if the're hoplessly incontinent.
But anyway, that's why several messages ago I pointed out that the legislator's intent is so important in these cases.
The point can be made that the demand to publish pictures of women with pasties and g-strings is nothing like the market for pictures of fully nude women. So, outlawing public nudity entirely is more than the minimum amount possible to uphold whatever the compelling interest is, given that the alternative is to allow full nudity when steps are taken to prevent members of the public from viewing the appearance of nudity.
By the way, I wonder whether a T-shirt with printed breasts depicted would count as "appearing nude" without actually being nude. Not that that has any bearing.
Well, I guess you're playing devil's advocate. If that were true, the Court would have ruled in favor of the nude dancers, since publishing videotapes of such dancing is clearly protected in the same jursidiction.
[391 U.S. 367, 377]Whatever you think of the pertinence of the California porn movie case, the fact remains that paying someone for sex is illegal unless that sex is being photographed, because of the first amendment protections involved.
Similarly, I think it's very likely that where being nude in public is illegal, if there's a camara involved and resonable precautions of the compelling government interest of the ordinance, then that becomes a protected expression.
That's a matter of purely subjective opinion, and in fact an opinion of "social/artistic" content, not a standard of conduct. The law is not allowed to regulate the content of a theater performance or photo shoot, based on anyone's opinion of what is or is not more artistic.
My point exactly -- the purpose of the public nudity was to publish photography, which is a protected form of first amendment exression. If she was just flashing people to get their phone numbers or something, she could claim no such protections.
It's not like that at all; the dancers in Erie were nude not for the purposes of publishing, but performance, which is much further from protected expression than publishing.
This distinction is tremendously important. One might consider visiting a prostitute to be a form of entertainment, but as such it doesn't enjoy any kind of first amendment protections. Put a camera in the room and that all changes. According to the California Supreme Court, "[E]ven if Defendant's conduct could somehow be found to come within the definition of 'prostitution' literally, the application of the pandering statute to the hiring of actors to perform in the production of a non-obscene motion picture would impinge unconstitutionally on First Amendment values." An appeal of that decision to the United States Supreme Court was denied review.
And that interest has to be balanced against the suspect's protected right to create photographs of her body in any environment for publication, by a judge and/or jury, not us.
IBM could hardly care less about SCO's fate. What is at issue here to IBM is the far more important issue of their software systems' legitimacy in the eyes of the market. SCO has done far more damage to that reputation than anything Microsoft could ever dream of, given their position as a clear competitor to both IBM and SCO. Since SCO/Caldera was very much a Linux company, their FUD rumors have had a tremendous chilling effect.
Now, there is no way to undo that damage with a settlement, as far as I or anyone I've read on Groklaw can tell. Even if SCO admits egregious errors in public, without a clear ruling from a judge and/or jury on the issues of IBM's rightful ownership of their e.g. AIX code, all of IBM's competitors will forever be able to twist the knife in their back. It no longer matters what SCO says or does, because their credibility is only intact with their own investors at this point. IBM, on the other hand, needs to clear their name.
I'm not so sure about that. Plenty of modern theater contains nudity, even some of which has played in Nebraska, maybe even Lincoln. All you need is one performance of "Hair" or "Oh! Calcutta!" unharrassed by police to show selective prosecution. I used to live in Nebraska, and their community standards are nowhere near, say, rural Tennessee. Scotts Bluff, Nebraska has corner porn+liquor stores and porn cable in their hotels just like everywhere from Chicago to Salt Lake City to Dallas.
Anyway, a little research shows that the particular application of Lincoln's ordinance in this case is almost certainly unconsitutional, even if the ordinance on its face is not. From Erie v. Pap's A. M. [529 U.S. 277, 289 (2000)]:
When the government prosecutes public nudity for any "compelling interest" against someone nude for the sole purpose of publishing photography, that runs afowl of prong (3), that "the governmental interest must be unrelated to the suppression of free expression." Barnes, [501 U.S. at 570] and prong (4) of O'Brien, especially since in this case there are apparently no complaining or known witnesses unacquainted with the subject, which is to say, those members of the public which the ordinance was designed to "protect."
So, clearly, the unconstitutionality of the ordinance as applied in this case is a real possibility, while we agree that the the constitutionality of the law on its face is not an issue. Perhaps that poster far above doubting the constitutionality has collected more box-tops for his law degree than you have suspected.
Well, for recklessness you're right, but sober people with clean records who get in nasty fatal automobile accidents are convicted of criminal involuntary manslaughter all the time. I don't think juries confuse slow reflexes, which they are fairly eager to punish, with guilty knowledge. Industrial penny-pinchers who make a considered decision on the wrong side of safety often face criminal negligence charges. They don't know they were doing something wrong until after the fact.
On the contrary, have another look at Lincoln Municipal Code Section 9.16.230: "It shall be unlawful for a person to, knowingly or intentionally, in a public place or in any place open to the public, appear in a state of nudity.
The law does not forbid simply being nude (e.g., as one might change clothes in a secluded yet public spot), but actually requir
If the defense challenges the constitutionality of a law, it's the prosecution's burden to show the law is constitutional. That means that unless they can quote a case in which the law was shown constitutional under a similar challenge, that they have to, among other things, state what the compelling government interest in the law is. Often this means simply pulling the legislative record, i.e., the city council minutes, and summarizing what the legislators were considering preventing. If they do find a similar challenge holding the law's constitutionality, that case will state the compelling government interest in the law.
The "injury" presupposed by the crime of public nudity is almost always "shock" and/or "offense." (Indiana tried to find a way around this, and in doing so outlawed nudity in theatrical performances including even R-rated movies, before the Supreme Court overturned them.)
The importance of the "compelling government interest" in the law, which is to say its purpose, is because if you have a law forbidding X in order to to prevent Y, then you can't be convicted of X, even if it was knowing and intentional X, if you have taken effective steps to prevent Y. For example, even if your town has a leash law, you don't need a leash on a dog being carted around in a cage.
The concept that a "moral" crime requires scienter , or mens rea , is an idea "deeply entrenched" in American criminal law [Joshua Dressler, Understanding Criminal Law sec. 10.01 (1987)]. The Supreme Court strongly expressed that notion in the 1952 case of Morisette v. United States [342 U.S. 246]; Justice Jackson wrote:
--Id. at 250.
No, that would be criminal negligence, reckless endangerment, creation of a hazard, and breach of peace. Whether you hit anyone or not doesn't mean that you didn't put people in danger, either directly because you might accidentally hit someone, or indirectly because they might get hurt while panicing and diving for cover. Convictions for negligence, recklessness, etc., even parking over a time limit, don't require a showing of scienter; crimes involving "moral wrongs" do. So, although the prosecution wouldn't have to show scienter for negligence for conviction, they would and could to convict you of reckless endangerment, creation of a hazard, and breaching the peace.
The ordinance in this case, which forbids "knowingly or intentionally" being nude in public, explicit
In order to be arrested, you must "knowingly or intentionally" "show" your woody in a "discernably turgid" state. This gives you a few ways around the charge.
1. You can claim lack of knowledge and intention. "Your honor, I had no idea I was turgid." I think it is highly unlikely that the prosecution could effectively counter this without spending a whole lot of money, but the jury might not buy it.
2. You can cover your woody with whatever is handy. Presumably a book or backpack would draw less attention than using your hands alone, which might put you in a different "lewd act" category of trouble.
3. You can immediatly remove your socks, stuff them down your pants aside your woody, preventing the discernability of your turgidity.
Otherwise, get a boner, go to jail.
unsworn, for entertainment, probably fiction, inadmissible
The determination is in the details. Ms. "Lincoln" is charged with a violation of Lincoln Municipal Code Section 9.16.230, which reads:
So, given part (c), she probably doesn't have the selective enforcement hook that the linked Virginia case turned on, other than the male/female topless selectivity thing that worked in Canada last year.
However, the government, if faced with an unconstitutionality claim, will have to state exactly what the compelling interest of the law is, and almost certainly it will be the same common law opposition to public nudity that is supposed to prevent people from being "shocked and offended." (Or driven mad with lacivious rage, or whatever.)
Now, for a conviction of a crime of intent (i.e., other than some kind of neglegence), scienter or "malice aforethought" must be proven. The defense in this case will almost certainly be able to prove an absence of malice, unless the procecution can produce a member of the public that observed the conduct depicted in the photographs and swears under penalty of purjury that they were shocked and/or offended. (With those breasts, I'm guessing you'd want a male for shocked and a female for offended.) The prosecution must also prove that the suspect was aware of the witness, or at least of the possibility of the witness's presence. The defense can counter with the likely fact, likely supported by witnesses, that (1) the indoor flashing was for a very brief period of time, and (2) the outdoor flashing was during a private party from which witnesses were being excluded.
In short, the prosecution has to prove, at the "beyond a reasonable doubt" level, that she was reckless about whether someone would be offended, which is not going to be easy.
For the topless-only pictures involved, it's the due process clause, in particular selective enforcement, in that guys can go topless and girls can't. Hey, don't look at me. It worked in Canada! Different constitution, but the exact same argument.
Anyway, laws prohibiting public nudity are frequently ruled unconstitutional as soon as some D.A. tries to enforce them, e.g. this case allowing erotic dancing in Virginia. That turned on, among other things, selective enforcement vis-a-vis nursing mothers. The details of the law are what make the real difference.
No, it's the unsubsidized cost due almost entirely to the fact that turbines have gone from noisy, inefficient 200 kW units to silent, efficient Danish designs producing 2-3 MW each, on the same footprint and essentially the same material costs.
The irony is that the European countries who were early adopters of the old creaky turbines are getting poor returns on their existing investments. I've read that we'll see 4 MW turbines any day now, and that there's still plenty of room for efficiency improvements and mass production economic benefits. I often wonder if a lot of the (U.S., again, sorry) energy policy that seems focused on coal and gas might very well be just a very shrewd biding of time until wind finally reaches that magic cheaper-than-coal price point.
When that happens, whether in 2005 or 2008, all of the sudden every farmer in the windy part of everywhere is going to lease their fields full of turbines, and the coal industry is going to be in for a real shock.
You obviously haven't checked the cost of natural gas lately, which is running about 9 cents/kwh this winter, up from 5 cents a few years ago. The unsubsidized cost of nuclear is even more, from 11 cents/kwh to as much as 50 cents/kwh depending on which government is covering the insurance involved (search on "Price-Anderson" to get the U.S. story.)
That leaves wind vs. coal, which in the U.S. generally sells for 1.5 cents/kwh (note if we had the anti-mercury pollution controls that are in place in Europe, coal would be about 3 cents/kwh.)
So, have a look at wind. Back in '98, wind cost 10 cents/kwh, but just five years later, it's wholesaleing in the U.S. for around 2 cents/kwh, and the price is continuing to fall, driven almost entirely by efficiency and other engineering improvements made to turbines (most of that work is done in Denmark, at Vestas.) It won't be long until U.S. wind beats the price of our dirtiest coal. Accordingly the wind industry is growing very quickly in the U.S.; at about 50% annually in revenue terms.
Some people believe that wind power could be dominant in much less than 30 years.
These things aren't going to get any better until handhelds get the cache sizes necessary to run a HMM search in reasonable time.
That is true, but the problem is solved primarily because the new, larger capacity turbines spin quite a bit slower, while the 30-year-old Altimont Pass turbines are fast and dangerous (and rather loud, too.) Once the Altamont Pass turbines are replaced (over the next fifteen years) they expect raptor kills to decline to as few as five or ten per year, IIRC.
Also, people forget that ordinary housecats kill between 200 and 300 million birds per year (not raptors, granted.)
On the contrary, Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 has repeatedly been held to allow news articles to be redistributed in full for noncommercial and many commercial purposes without permission from the copyright holder. Such 'fair use' of copyrighted material for "criticism, comment, news reporting, ... or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
Complete news articles have always been recognized as exempt under the 'fair use doctrine' for noncommercial redistribution, as well as limited commercial uses, since long before Section 107 was codified.
This is the kind of informative interesting insight for which I read Slashdot. Thank you OCG.
First, there is no such work by Asimov.
Second, the pertinent Turing paper was published in 1936.