This has, of course, been muddied by the extremely popular usage of "I have limited bandwidth. I only get 20GB of download a month."
My university IT department uses "bandwidth" in this way. This is at The University of Texas, which has prestigious computer science and computer engineering faculties, I believe.
The IT department on campus puts caps on bandwidth usage, and if you go over each week, you have to more "bandwidth."
If you have reached your bandwidth limit, you may purchase additional bandwidth in 1-gigabyte (GB) increments from the Public Network Store in TX Shop (up to three GB per week). Purchased bandwidth will first be used to make up the amount by which you exceed your allocation, and the remainder is available for you to use on the 1st-class service bracket until your reset day, when your account is reset to your full bandwidth allocation.
There, the residential network seems to be conflating the throughput and dictionary usages of the word.
I wonder what it would be like if everyone started using the word as a general insult. Would it become disassociated from black people? I know there's some sort of reclamation of the word (like "nerd" and "geek" have been reclaimed by their respective populations) as a term of empowerment, but what if the word became just a general insult and lost all ties to being black?
It would be an interesting linguistic and social experiment from a scientific point of view. I'm not sure how it gels socially with everyone, though.
There is a folk (and false) etymology of the word that it derives from "niggard" meaning, basically "a scrooge." That might help it along to becoming a general insult.
Because I fear for my future employment, I'd like to clarify that I'm not glorifying its use and am merely posing a question about what the world might look like if the word became a general insult completely unaffiliated with its former racist connotations or even just asking aloud whether this would even be possible.
To explain to those who don't know for lack of education or lack of native ability, the correct statement is "If he were alive today . .."
Here is an explanation. I am trying to perfect my use of the subjunctive in speech. I'm typically a descriptive grammatist, but when writing formal documents, I become a prescriptive grammatist.
there is almost nothing I know of that is more powerful than a pure motive. That's simply doing a thing for the sake of seeing it done and for absolutely no other reason, and enjoying it. This completely frees you of any concern for the outcome which greatly increases your effectiveness by removing any ulterior motives (usually control-based or the need to feel right). It also makes you undeterred by unexpected difficulties. For what the unsolicited advice of this stranger is worth, I'd recommend debating your family members in this spirit and seeing for yourself how powerful it is. If you do see that, know that it's not at all limited to debates and can be applied to anything.
I think your advice is very useful to someone interested in improving their ability to debate anything. But can you explain this part a little further? I can't tell if you're suggesting that the motive "I want this to happen, not just for me to be right all the time" is useful, or if "I want this to happen but have no principled reason why I do" is useful.
Because I think the first is insightful and I agree, but the second seems destructive and like a roll of the dice. If you could explain, that would help.
I'd say that almost everyone behaves that way. Even I do, and I'm 100% aware at all times other than pressure-time that I do it. Even afterwards, I think, "Argh, why did I start acting with a maximum amount of bullshit there?" But I still do it.
I suspect it's hardwired into the human brain, and it takes a very extreme degree of control to overcome it, similar to how (most) priests overcome the sex drive to be celibate.
I'm trying to learn a new style of debate against some of my family members who disagree with me politically: When debating, just respond to their assertions with a "Why do you think that?" Eventually, I hope to get to a no-reason response or a controversial/inflammatory response that will reveal them as foolish axioms (thus making the C-observer aware of the foolishness), intelligent axioms I might support (thus I find Truth), or no-axioms (which weakens a C-observer's support).
It also has the nice side effect of removing much to latch onto of my own argument, preventing my beliefs from being attacked. Thanks to law school, I've already adopted a more ambivalent approach to logical argument in which I habitually take on arguments I don't even agree with just to see where the arguments go. The idea would be that I might find Truth accidentally.
There's nothing that special about Beowulf from a myth-that-is-very-old standpoint (aside from the fact that it preserves information about Scandinavia and Old English). Beowulf is at best based on a man 1300 years ago. The Bible preserves purported history older than that. Hell, Homer's Iliad preserves story about a possible conflict over 3000 years ago.
President Obama would like to disagree with you on that one. We went from extremely tight races in 2000 and 2004 to a landslide in the electoral college in 2008. That shows there were, at a minimum, a large number of swing states in 2008.
To do the math yourself, go to www.census.gov and get state populations (don't forget DC). Then put those in an Excel spreadsheet next to the electoral votes for each state. Divide pop by votes, then sort those numbers. Also calculate the total population by 535, then divide the representation for each state by that number. You'll see who comes out ahead and behind.
I last did this years ago, so I don't have it to hand now, but it's very interesting. There's about one electoral vote per 700,000 people in the US, but Wyoming gets something like 1 per 500,000. California, Texas, and New York each came out at about 700,000, but states like Ohio etc. were more like 800,000.
Although to be fair, the four largest of the original thirteen states had an aggregate population in 1790 greater than 50% of the entire nation's population: VA, PA, NC, and MA sum up to 56% of the population. VA alone was 21% of the entire US population in 1790!
We can argue what the statistics ultimately mean, but the fact remains that (according to my spreadsheet using as sources 1999 and 1790) the standard deviation of population distribution in 1790 was a whopping 5.23%, while in 1999 it was only 2.2%. This means there was an even wider spread of populations in 1790 than in 1999.
So you can argue that power is allocated disproportionately concerning population, but you cannot argue truthfully that the population is more disproportionate now than it was at the time the Constitution was written.*
Of course, I'm not really sure you were even arguing that.
*s/written/composed through time-pressured political compromise
And I'm sure people in Montana completely disagree with you. People from MT and people from CA operate in political life under different axiomatic systems. In order to reconcile these differences to accomplish anything whatsoever, political compromise must occur.
The compromise that created our current bicameral system was the Connecticut Compromise, balancing the desires of large-state Virginia and small-state New Jersey.
I don't presume to pronounce the legal conclusion, but it's more likely that you won't be successfully sued, since OJ is a public figure, and thus it is more difficult under NY Times v. Sullivan to win a suit against you.
However posts on a forum are more akin to a private conversation in a public place.
How so? Posting in a publicly-accessible forum is more akin to standing at a loudspeaker in an airport, looking at your friend, and talking. You know anyone who enters the airport can hear you.
That's not a private conversation. That's a public conversation.
Presumably nuclear weapons and anthrax are constitutional under the Second Amendment, right? And murder (since it is a form of hate speech) is constitutional under the First Amendment, too, right?
How can there be an absolute law in the Constitution if the framers themselves (you know, the guys who wrote the Constitution) never even agreed on what the words they chose inherently meant?
See, e.g., the big debates between Madison and Hamilton.
how do you prove "truth/untruth" in a situation like the OPs
You make the jury believe the daughter over the teacher. That's what juries are for: to determine what testimony is trustworthy. That is accomplished through artful litigating on the lawyer's part and through the natural trustworthiness of the witness.
I'm not so sure about that. Federal Civil Procedure was my worst class in law school as far as what I understood ('twas my 1L year and I was an idiot), but I'm pretty sure a defendant can't bring a 3d party defendant in unless the 3d party defendant committed harm against the defendant.
It's the plaintiff's choice as to who he sues. The defendant can't force the plaintiff to sue other people. Source.
To expound on the OJ matter, in criminal cases you have to show about 80-99% assurance of guilt (there is debate as to what "beyond a reasonable doubt" actually means).
In civil cases, the winner is the one who can show >50% assurance he is the party in the right.
So if there is a 51% probability that OJ committed murder he will be cleared of criminal charges but be civilly liable, all other things being equal (same facts adduced, etc.).
Note that these are two different tribunals. A defendant does not have one court case that is simultaneously criminal and civil.
The civil was initiated by the family of Ron Goldman. The criminal was initiated by the State.
Also important to note is that harm must actually occur from your purported defamation. Without harm, a defamation suit falls on its face. Here are some defenses that show up:
truth
good faith and reasonable belief of truth
privilege (testimony, Congressional statements, etc., are by statute privileged from defamation suits)
opinion
fair comment on a matter of public interest
consent
innocent dissemination
incapable of causing harm, i.e., the defamed has such a terrible reputation already that the purportedly defamatory statements cannot possibly knock him down any lower
So long as you're not acting like a giant dick and spreading malicious rumors about someone, you're pretty safe online.
People tend to forget that common sense is usually a pretty damn good indicator of how you should behave. The law (especially common law) tends to reflect such common sense, as it was always guided by the common sense of judges on the bench. Common sense tells you not to act like an asshole. So don't act like one.
Amen, buddy. In my first year legal research and writing class, we learned about two such scenarios: (1) a missing comma that drastically changed the meaning, and (2) a "that" that should have been a "which," which changed the meaning of a clause and destroyed one party's legal position. I think most American English speakers don't realize or know the difference between "that" and "which," but we were instructed on that in law school on day one.
Slashdot Mirror
This has, of course, been muddied by the extremely popular usage of "I have limited bandwidth. I only get 20GB of download a month."
My university IT department uses "bandwidth" in this way. This is at The University of Texas, which has prestigious computer science and computer engineering faculties, I believe.
The IT department on campus puts caps on bandwidth usage, and if you go over each week, you have to more "bandwidth."
http://resnet.utexas.edu/support/more-bandwidth.html
There, the residential network seems to be conflating the throughput and dictionary usages of the word.
I wonder what it would be like if everyone started using the word as a general insult. Would it become disassociated from black people? I know there's some sort of reclamation of the word (like "nerd" and "geek" have been reclaimed by their respective populations) as a term of empowerment, but what if the word became just a general insult and lost all ties to being black?
It would be an interesting linguistic and social experiment from a scientific point of view. I'm not sure how it gels socially with everyone, though.
There is a folk (and false) etymology of the word that it derives from "niggard" meaning, basically "a scrooge." That might help it along to becoming a general insult.
Because I fear for my future employment, I'd like to clarify that I'm not glorifying its use and am merely posing a question about what the world might look like if the word became a general insult completely unaffiliated with its former racist connotations or even just asking aloud whether this would even be possible.
Best. Grammar. Nazi. Ever.
I would mod you up, good sir!
To explain to those who don't know for lack of education or lack of native ability, the correct statement is "If he were alive today . . ."
Here is an explanation. I am trying to perfect my use of the subjunctive in speech. I'm typically a descriptive grammatist, but when writing formal documents, I become a prescriptive grammatist.
I think your advice is very useful to someone interested in improving their ability to debate anything. But can you explain this part a little further? I can't tell if you're suggesting that the motive "I want this to happen, not just for me to be right all the time" is useful, or if "I want this to happen but have no principled reason why I do" is useful.
Because I think the first is insightful and I agree, but the second seems destructive and like a roll of the dice. If you could explain, that would help.
I'd say that almost everyone behaves that way. Even I do, and I'm 100% aware at all times other than pressure-time that I do it. Even afterwards, I think, "Argh, why did I start acting with a maximum amount of bullshit there?" But I still do it.
I suspect it's hardwired into the human brain, and it takes a very extreme degree of control to overcome it, similar to how (most) priests overcome the sex drive to be celibate.
I'm trying to learn a new style of debate against some of my family members who disagree with me politically: When debating, just respond to their assertions with a "Why do you think that?" Eventually, I hope to get to a no-reason response or a controversial/inflammatory response that will reveal them as foolish axioms (thus making the C-observer aware of the foolishness), intelligent axioms I might support (thus I find Truth), or no-axioms (which weakens a C-observer's support).
It also has the nice side effect of removing much to latch onto of my own argument, preventing my beliefs from being attacked. Thanks to law school, I've already adopted a more ambivalent approach to logical argument in which I habitually take on arguments I don't even agree with just to see where the arguments go. The idea would be that I might find Truth accidentally.
Some ligers (lion-tiger crosses) are fertile, though.
There's nothing that special about Beowulf from a myth-that-is-very-old standpoint (aside from the fact that it preserves information about Scandinavia and Old English). Beowulf is at best based on a man 1300 years ago. The Bible preserves purported history older than that. Hell, Homer's Iliad preserves story about a possible conflict over 3000 years ago.
President Obama would like to disagree with you on that one. We went from extremely tight races in 2000 and 2004 to a landslide in the electoral college in 2008. That shows there were, at a minimum, a large number of swing states in 2008.
Although to be fair, the four largest of the original thirteen states had an aggregate population in 1790 greater than 50% of the entire nation's population: VA, PA, NC, and MA sum up to 56% of the population. VA alone was 21% of the entire US population in 1790!
We can argue what the statistics ultimately mean, but the fact remains that (according to my spreadsheet using as sources 1999 and 1790) the standard deviation of population distribution in 1790 was a whopping 5.23%, while in 1999 it was only 2.2%. This means there was an even wider spread of populations in 1790 than in 1999.
So you can argue that power is allocated disproportionately concerning population, but you cannot argue truthfully that the population is more disproportionate now than it was at the time the Constitution was written.*
Of course, I'm not really sure you were even arguing that.
*s/written/composed through time-pressured political compromise
And I'm sure people in Montana completely disagree with you. People from MT and people from CA operate in political life under different axiomatic systems. In order to reconcile these differences to accomplish anything whatsoever, political compromise must occur.
The compromise that created our current bicameral system was the Connecticut Compromise, balancing the desires of large-state Virginia and small-state New Jersey.
It's not. Or do you think you're informed enough on the issues of regulating waterfowl hunting to deserve to vote on the issue?
Democracy is a terrible idea for a nation the size of the US. The democratic republic we have now is much better.
I don't presume to pronounce the legal conclusion, but it's more likely that you won't be successfully sued, since OJ is a public figure, and thus it is more difficult under NY Times v. Sullivan to win a suit against you.
How so? Posting in a publicly-accessible forum is more akin to standing at a loudspeaker in an airport, looking at your friend, and talking. You know anyone who enters the airport can hear you.
That's not a private conversation. That's a public conversation.
Really? Where have you been since the 13th century?
Presumably nuclear weapons and anthrax are constitutional under the Second Amendment, right? And murder (since it is a form of hate speech) is constitutional under the First Amendment, too, right?
How can there be an absolute law in the Constitution if the framers themselves (you know, the guys who wrote the Constitution) never even agreed on what the words they chose inherently meant?
See, e.g., the big debates between Madison and Hamilton.
I'd like to introduce you to the Constitution.
Is that the Windows version of /b/?
You make the jury believe the daughter over the teacher. That's what juries are for: to determine what testimony is trustworthy. That is accomplished through artful litigating on the lawyer's part and through the natural trustworthiness of the witness.
I'm not so sure about that. Federal Civil Procedure was my worst class in law school as far as what I understood ('twas my 1L year and I was an idiot), but I'm pretty sure a defendant can't bring a 3d party defendant in unless the 3d party defendant committed harm against the defendant.
It's the plaintiff's choice as to who he sues. The defendant can't force the plaintiff to sue other people. Source.
Unless you're the opposite hand, of course.
To expound on the OJ matter, in criminal cases you have to show about 80-99% assurance of guilt (there is debate as to what "beyond a reasonable doubt" actually means).
In civil cases, the winner is the one who can show >50% assurance he is the party in the right.
So if there is a 51% probability that OJ committed murder he will be cleared of criminal charges but be civilly liable, all other things being equal (same facts adduced, etc.).
Note that these are two different tribunals. A defendant does not have one court case that is simultaneously criminal and civil.
The civil was initiated by the family of Ron Goldman. The criminal was initiated by the State.
Also important to note is that harm must actually occur from your purported defamation. Without harm, a defamation suit falls on its face. Here are some defenses that show up:
So long as you're not acting like a giant dick and spreading malicious rumors about someone, you're pretty safe online.
People tend to forget that common sense is usually a pretty damn good indicator of how you should behave. The law (especially common law) tends to reflect such common sense, as it was always guided by the common sense of judges on the bench. Common sense tells you not to act like an asshole. So don't act like one.
Because you've proposed no implementation, I can only posit the one most likely to occur in my opinion. It's called "planning for the worst."
Could you tell me what other way we could prove someone guilty if "I didn't know ____ was illegal" was an absolute defense at trial?
Amen, buddy. In my first year legal research and writing class, we learned about two such scenarios: (1) a missing comma that drastically changed the meaning, and (2) a "that" that should have been a "which," which changed the meaning of a clause and destroyed one party's legal position. I think most American English speakers don't realize or know the difference between "that" and "which," but we were instructed on that in law school on day one.