Let me rephrase something: The point of view you're supporting isn't ultra-libertarian, it's anarchist. Libertarians at least acknowledge the role of government in preventing people from inflicting bodily harm upon one another.
I don't mean anarchist in any pejorative sense, but I do think that most of their political suggestions are utterly ludicrous and provably ineffective.
Beer has been proven to prolong your life (yes, beer specifically) when drunk in moderation--2-3 per day (for males) reduces your lifelong chance of having a heart attack by around 30%-35% . No amount of smoking is proven to have any positive effects that I'm aware of. It's also kinda hard to unintentionally drink beer--again, as with cellphones, there is no secondhand effect.
Seriously, I can understand arguing that secondhand smoke hasn't been proven to cause harm, but I fail to comprehend people who acknowledge (or assume for the sake of argument) that it is harmful, but take the uber-libertarian view that smokers should have to right to poison non-smoker's air supply. One of the most basic functions of government is to prevent people from physically harming each other. Walking into a restaurant, privately owned or not, doesn't give anyone the right to harm me, and "my lungs" are definitely a part of "me". Would you argue that "roughhouse" restaurants should exist where, by walking in, your forfeit your right to NOT be assaulted or (since lung cancer is indeed fatal) even murdered? Would even children forfeit this right if they're brought there by their parents? (Where I live, only restaurants are forbidden to have indoor smoking--21 and up bars can permit it.)
Assuming for the sake of argument that secondhand smoke does increase one's risk of deadly diseases, I think the analogy is apt. Protection from bodily harm isn't something that can magically evaporate when you step foot on private property.
I asked my girlfriend--she didn't have a problem with it. Nor do I see how being "sanitary" has anything to do with it.
Don't get me wrong, I can see where you're coming from, and it's not something I'd do on a regular basis or anything, but on the 1-10 scale of assholishness don't even think it merits a "1", so long as you can conceal the sounds and/or your party doesn't have a problem with it. Annoying other people in a public restroom is another matter entirely, I admit.
That's because smoking in my vicinity causes me to breathe in toxic and radioactive gases. Cell phone use is merely annoying (and "secondhand RF" is completely negligible.) Slight difference there.
Oh yes, and that Nina was in his car while suffering a hangnail or recently-popped bleeding pimple or some such. (i.e. Single-drop blood detection means NOTHING.)
Yes, and it's just coincidence that she had an affair with a confessed serial killer (and said affair was supposedly the basis for the breakup of their marriage.) And it's ALSO a coincidence that Nina managed to secretly obtain Russian citizenship for her son two months before her disappearance (she secretly obtained Russian citizenship for her daughter years prior.) And it's also a coincidence that both children are now in Russia under the care of their maternal grandmother, who refuses to send them back to testify even though they were with Hans at the time during which he was supposedly committing this murder.
I don't know if Hans ever loved anybody. And I don't know whether or not he's an asshole like so many people claim. But to claim, without qualification, that he killed his wife in the face of such insanely suspicious circumstances is reprehensible. Maybe the police are hiding some crucial piece of evidence, but so far the only evidence they've presented is that Hans was a dick, and that he was living out of his car.
Agreed. On everything. I meant to mention selective enforcement, but it slipped my mind. And white collar crime is woefully under-punished--and under-defined.
But I think I can still agree with you about all that and disagree on Ron Paul being a racist. Factual observations and/or reasonable speculative exaggerations based on those observations should never qualify anyone as a racist. You can argue that the guy's priorities are all mixed up if blue collar crime is really such a priority for him, but in that case politicians everywhere have their priorities mixed up.
95% seems excessive, but check out this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime#Statistics . In 1998, nearly one-third of all 20-29 year old black males in America were currently pending trial, in prison, or on parole (and this claim has two citations.) One_third. Now consider that this statistic doesn't include convicted black males who are no longer under parole. And consider that certain areas have a higher concentration of criminals than others (big cities having more because of their concentration of wealth and ease of evading law enforcement in their population density.) And also consider that Paul was accusing the D.C. cops of being ineffective (i.e. not catching the majority of the criminals)... I feel a tad sick in saying it, but if his accusation is true, I don't think that the 95% statistic is so obviously racist as you seem to think.
It's probably an exaggeration, yes, and but (provided we limit ourselves to young black men, and make the assumptions outlined above) it's not an obscene one. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the actual figure is in the vicinity of 75%, perhaps even higher. And before you peg me a racist, let me hasten to say that I am against the war on drugs, and the majority of those crimes are likely nonviolent drug crimes. Just because someone is a criminal does not make them a bad person; there are such things as unjust laws. Also, I don't believe that black people are in any way genetically predisposed to anything; any statistical discrepancies are most likely the generations-old leftovers of post-slavery (and post-discrimination) poverty.
On the Israeli note--it is a very sad thing that people cannot criticize Israel and Zionism without being accused of anti-Semitism. While I applaud many progressive Israeli policies, the Zionist movement really picked the worst possible location in the world for their homeland. I suppose it's now far too late to think about doing it elsewhere, but in the 60+ years since their sovereignty was declared, their government has done some horrific (and more than a few extremely stupid) things, which has just gone on to destabilize the region even more. Israel is kept alive in no small part by the United States' willingness to supply them with state of the art weaponry, including (as is widely assumed, but cannot be absolutely proven) nuclear weapons. On the whole I think that Israel has been a hell of a lot more civilized than their neighbors have been, but that doesn't mean we should continue to support them unilaterally--doing the "right" thing isn't right if it means destabilizing the region even further and pushing us closer to World War III. That's my own view of the matter--Paul's was about pro-Israel lobbyists having too much power. That may or may not be true, but simply putting forth the argument doesn't make him a racist. I agree, it *could* be an initial warning sign that he harbors deeper, more generalized (and crackpot) Jewish conspiracy theories, but it could also be a very sane and straightforward observation based on the fact that the United States is ONLY country (of any significant size) that consistently and usually unequivocally supports Israel in the UN.
No one can "ultimately prove" anything in this life. When someone says something doesn't exist, the sane and reasonable interpretation is "from what I've determined using my obviously only-human brain and inevitably-NON-OMNIPOTENT KNOWLEDGE." You would literally have to stick that preface before every single time you ever said something that wasn't true, even if you were just saying that you ate oatmeal for breakfast. How do you KNOW it was oatmeal? Someone could have snuck in while you were asleep and exchanged it for extremely convincing oatmeal-substitute. An obscenely unlikely proposition, but still possible.
And you've still dodged the issue--is stating the nonexistence of god fundamentally different than stating the nonexistence of leprechauns/FSMs/faries/dragons/etc. or isn't it?
Nice way to completely ignore all of my counter-examples. Do you have a problem with me saying "Leprechauns don't exist"? Yes, it's entirely possible that they exist and have all of these cool powers that let them hide themselves from humans. It's_possible. But is it fair to say someone is making a "faith statement" if they say that leprechauns don't exist?
So, do you say the same thing about leprechauns, the tooth fairy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (praise be his noodley appendage), invisible pink unicorns, dragons, one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eaters, or the Great Green Arkleseizure? Or ghosts, for that matter?
Just because someone denies the existence of something that we have absolutely no evidence for, does not mean that they are making a "faith statement." I think you misinterpret reasonable deniable for absolute, "could-not-possibly-exist" denial. Few true scientists will claim that there is absolutely no possibility of a god-like being existing. However, these same sciences will also grant the same (quite possibly even greater, depending on the scientist) possibility for the existence, somewhere in this universe, for a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater. Clearly, it's reasonable to deny the existence of the latter, since we have absolutely no proof of it, so it is therefore also reasonable to deny the existence of the former--not in absolute, I'm 100%-positive terms but in everyday "No, I'm pretty sure 'He' doesn't exist" terms.
Think about that word you justed used--product. I bought their PRODUCT--I did NOT sign a contract with them. And no, EULAs don't count because I didn't get a chance to agree to the terms *before* I bought the product. So tell me, why do you think that a company has the right to tell you how to use their product? If I sell you a car, I don't have the right to demand that you use Shell gas.
Ok, so why don't you guys give me non-anecdotal evidence showing that non-illegal use of modchips is so rare as to be insignificant? You can't denounce my use of anecdotal evidence if you have nothing better to show.
The devices seized are used to copy and play Nintendo DS games offered unlawfully over the Internet, and the mod chips allow the play of pirated Wii discs or illegal copies of downloaded Nintendo game
They're also used to play games that aren't available for sale in the USA (and won't run on a North American Wii even if you import them legally), and they're used to play legal ("Fair Use") backups of game discs that have been damaged.
All of you MAFIAA shills can whine "oh but that's not what you guys are REALLY using them for!" all you want, but my both my sister and my girlfriend like Japanese date sims (weird, yes), and I've known several people who've had a game disc damaged beyond playability--usually by dogs or small children.
Reading the XKCD forums, apparently prior to the ninja incident someone actually sent RMS a katana (which, in the comic, he whips out to defend himself against them.) He didn't bring it to the debate with him, but someone did take some pictures of him holding it: http://www.gnu.org/people/jag/rms-with-katana/
He does not consider his appearance to be essential. He might not even consider his health to be absolutely essential. He does consider his cause to be essential, and that is what he chooses to spend his time and energy on.
He's not "dressing lazy"; IIRC he simply does not own a suit. He does not believe in wasting wealth on non-essential items; this enables him to live on a relatively small income while spending most of his time pursuing the ideals he cares about. In my opinion, this attitude is much more noble than your "Hey, there's a guy with a cheap wardrobe! What a disrespectful jerk!" attitude. Expecting someone to waste hundreds of dollars to dress up like a penguin (insert Linux joke here) just to show that they "respect" you is extremely childish. Respect is a quality of interaction between people--material goods have no inherent 'respect'.
And don't try to hide behind social custom. Just because some people are (by common custom) materialistic, elitist assholes doesn't mean you have to be too.
I could have seen a pedestrian a mile a way, and so too could he have seen me. This was a husky, heavy mountain bike--not a racing bike--and I was pedaling rather leisurely. And like I said, it was a very well lit sidewalk, both from the full moon and from the street lights. You might as well argue that the pedestrians be required to carry lights to prevent them from bumping into each other. Ray Bradbury was in part inspired to write Farenheight 451 after being stopped by a police officer for walking with a friend on a sidewalk at night. He--and I--were very much disturbed by the idea that merely walking, merely EXISTING on a public path after hours should be illegal.
The point is not the offense itself. If I had a headlight on my bike, the cop would've come up with something else to threaten me with. Hell, he approached me from BEHIND in his car, and I very much doubt that he could have clearly seen whether or not I had any light. If I had a headlight, he doubtless would have claimed I was drunkenly "weaving", just like they did when they pulled me over in my car (incidently, I passed their sobriety tests because I hadn't touched a drop of liquor either night.) He gave me the runaround for 15 minutes before he even mentioned the headlight thing--likely he and his partner were busy trying to come up with SOMETHING--and he still refused to give me a ticket or inform me if I was being charged with anything for quite a while longer, until after I volunteered to be frisked.
I didn't say I was the white Rodney King or anything. If mine was the biggest abuse of police power in this country, I would most gladly shut up and never mention it again, because in the end it was only an inconvenient 30-45 minute delay. But I believe my experiences are indicative of a larger, systemtic, ingrained philosophy amongst most of the police officers I've interacted with. The public are all criminals--most of them just haven't been caught yet--and criminals can be used to provide money for the PD and prestige for the arresting officer. If they let you walk with a warning, it's because they don't want to bother, or they want to feel good about themselves by showing your sorry, groveling ass some mercy, or they know that the charge won't stick (though sometimes even in this latter case, they'll charge you anyway... if you've personally offended them.)
The guy I referenced was doing nothing more than sitting, passively resisting the police. From what I understand he was an asshole about it, but I greatly object to the notion that ANY Ghandi-style passive resistence should be met with tazers (which are, as you may or may not be aware, potentially lethal weapons.)
But I do know that letting people simply get away with being shitty doesn't sit right with me.
You're missing the point. The woman DIDN'T get away with it--she was charged with battery. If my friend had been a police officer instead of a fry cook, it would have carried an even harsher sentence.
If you want to talk about prison reform, that's something else entirely. I do not believe that prisoners should be able to interact amongst themselves at all, nor do I believe in any prison luxuries (including non-educational televsion/books/magazines, cigarettes, etc.), nor do I believe that ANYONE convicted of a felony (or a repeat misdemeanor offender) should EVER be released without performing an extended work-release program and at least making a genuine effort to appear to be reformed. "Paying their debt" be damned; they shouldn't EVER be released if the parole board has any reasonable suspicion whatsoever that they will commit more crimes.
So you see, I'm not a soft-hearted liberal at all--I just do not believe in vigilante justice. You would have me take the cop at his word that the suspect deserved it--sorry, but NO human is that trustworthy. Cops are cops--they aren't judges or juries. I grant you that judges and juries and the general public at large probably don't respect just how tough it is being a cop, but I have already outlined how and why this should not be an excuse. If it's really that much of a dirty and nasty job, let's just pay 'em more. Hell, I'll take the occasional insult and even the occasional punch or kick *without* overreacting if they'll pay me $100,000/year to do it.
If someone punches a cop, they are guilty of battery on a law enforcement officer, and the extra punishment incurred therein should be sufficient justice. If you disagree, then lobby to change the law, or change our prison philosophy. Cops punishing assholes on their own, outside of the courtroom ISN'T the answer. Not only are they biased against they criminals, but they're biased in favor of themselves--as this story proves, far too many cops (and perhaps DAs as well?) are assholes themselves.
The police are in the business of putting criminals in jail, not inacting their own brand of physical justice. I'm not saying that every single combative action needs to be carefully mulled over--I'm just saying that when a woman is CLEARLY hurt and bleeding badly and in no state to hurt or threaten to hurt anyone, you do NOT need to go over and hurt her some more. You put her in jail--you let the justice system do what it's supposed to do. In the heat of the moment, sure, a cop can strike back, but by the time my friend realized she'd been hit the woman was already on the ground and out of reach. She would have had to gone outside of the building or thrown something at her or seomthing.
Similarly, that guy who was tazered and pepper sprayed for refusing to present his ID card in a college library was just being an asshole. There's no reason to tazer an asshole, and it was downright abusive (if not criminal) for them to do so. They're menat to ARREST law-breaking assholes. If they don't want to move, carry them. If they violently throw off your grip, THEN you spray and taze 'em. If they throw a punch, beat 'em until they go down (but not AFTER they go down.) If they draw a gun, blow their fucking heads off (but stop shooting if they drop the gun.) How hard is that to comprehend?
They are treated like shit day in and day out verbally and physcially by douchebags like yourself who love to claim they "know their rights" (and rarely know much of anything).
So why am I a douchebag? Because I think that the cops should not be able to arrest a couple and charge them with stalking for REPORTING A CRIME simply because they don't like the fact that the criminal was, in this case, a cop? Because I think that they should show restraint when physical force isn't necessary? The fact that your cop friends didn't do anything questionable proves NOTHING, because they had a civilian riding along (you.)
Oh and since I apparently don't know my rights, would you care to enlighten me? Let me guess, I have the right to have my ass kicked by someone wearing blue if I don't put my hands behind my back fast enough...
They're far better people than you could ever hope to be, and I hope you remember that next time you need a cop.
Simply being able to tolerate a shitty job doesn't make you a better person--by that argument, I'm a better person than you for having to work at McDonald's for a few months. Of course, not every cop abuses their power, but the system as a whole ENCOURAGES such abuse.
I've been pulled over a grand total of three times in my life so far--twice for "weaving", both times in nearly the EXACT same spot in the road (where the lines shift slightly, and thus you HAVE to weave a little.) If I drive by there later than 11 pm, more often then not I'll see another car pulled over in the exact same spot. It's total bullshit, and it wouldn't be happening if local districts didn't receive money for the tickets they give out--the police department should be well-funded, PERIOD. They should not be forced to (nor have the incentive to) hand out more tickets just to increase their budget. The other time I got pulled over was when I was riding my bicycle on the sidewalk at night. The officer informed me that riding on the sidewalk was perfectly legal in that area, but riding without a headlight was not. Not a reflector, a_mother_fucking_HEADLIGHT. On the sidewalk, in the full moon, on a road with plenty of street lights, without any other pedestrians in sight. Yeah, a headlight was REALLY going to make a difference if someone was drunk enough to run off the road entirely and hit me. The officer refused to say whether he was going to give me a ticket or take me jail or what--he refused to charge me with a crime or turn me loose--he just let me stand there and babble and kiss his ass and finally, after I voluntarily let him search me, he let me go with a warning. He didn't give a FLYING FUCK about no goddamned headlight--he wanted to search me (a long-haired guy riding a bike alone at night), and since I had places to go and people to see, I waived my constitutional rights just to get out of there quicker.
I'm lucky enough to be a middle-class white guy, so (fortunately for me) that's the extent of my 'horror' stories. I could tell you some of my friends', but you'd probably dismiss 'em as hearsay (or bullshit.) So, why don't we stick to the well-known FACTS, then... every single time these news articles come up, you fuckers have to come out here and defend them. Why can't you defend your honest cop friends while simultaneously denouncing abuses of power such as this? Better yet, why can't THEY denounce their abusive friends while simultaneously asking for more funds/personel/equipment/whatever?
One of the requirements for being a cop should be obeying the law. Sorry if you think that's unreasonable--I assure you that those of us sane people here in the real world think that it's very reasonable indeed. If a cop is shown to be repeatedly breaking the law (especially an off-duty cop with no official reason to speed), at the very least he should be told to "knock it off." That's the maximum amount of leniency I should expect (and even then a lot of people would decry an automatic get-out-of-a-ticket-free
I love dragging out this story every time the police aplogists come out of the woodwork.
Many years ago, I was working a brief stint at McDonalds (yes, McDonalds:weeps:) because my other jobs had fallen through. My good friend Pam was working drive through, when a large, pissed off black woman pulled to the pick-up window and tried to order something. We were in the middle of a rush (if you don't understand what a "rush" is in fast food parlance, count yourself blessed and imagine instead, say, the first 10 minutes from Saving Private Ryan), so Pam told her "sorry, we don't take orders from this window, you'llhave to drive around again."
The woman was... displeased. She got out of the car, started berating my friend quit severely, tried to pry open the window while Pam held it shut, then, as god as my witness, she punched THROUGH the plate glass window, hitting Pam in the face.
Through all this, my friend mantained professionalism, did not insult the customer and after she was hit, calmly walked away and called the police. You see, even the lowliest fry cooks are expected to have PROFESSIONALISM. We were not allowed to yell at customers, let alone spit in their food. We did our jobs as civilly as possible, despite the fact that it was gruling and we were making wage.
My friend, the FRY COOK, observed that the woman had done a VERY stupid thing and was now bleeding profusely everywhere and was in no shape to threaten anyone. What would your average cop have done, if a large black woman had slugged HIM across the chin? Would he have allowed her to fall to the ground and bleed and cry in peace? Or would he first teach her a lesson? At the very least, I'd say, she would walk away with a few extra nasty brusies. If the cop was in a bad mood, probably a broken bone or a concussion. I've seen, on a Cops-like reality show, the police tazer a (black) man who was doing nothing other than "walking towards them in a threatening manner", when I could see nothing even remotely threatening in his shuffling about (a good 15+ feet away--they were the projectile tazers, and his hands were in plain sight.) The police were PROUD to defend their actions, and confident enough to release the footage to the producers of the show (so, I wondered--what was on the tape they felt too questionable to release?) After being shocked, the man fell face first onto cement, most likely resulting in severe contusions and hairline fractures.
But this war story of mine is just an extreme example. Trust me, McDonald's has a neverending supply of asshole customers. The fact of the matter is, you can walk into nearly any retail business--insulting, cussing, being as big of an asshole as you want--and the workers there (so long as they aren't self-employeed business owners) will generally refrain from retaliation. They will DO THEIR JOBS with as least some semblance of professionalism.
But you'd have to be CRAZY to try the same asshole routine with a cop. They do NOT give a rats ass about fairness and professionalism unless you kiss the they walk on.
Yeah yeah yeah, I'm SURE it's a shitty job, but--in the words of Carlos Mencia--when they give you a sidearm, a second gun to strap to your ankle, pepper spray (actually, more often it's a chemical mace unavailable to the public) to blind them, a stick to beat 'em down with, a bulletproof vest to protect you from return fire, a shotgun in a trunk, a dog in the back seat and a radio so you can call for backup, you just might have to think to yourself: you know, I think some shit might be going down. To put it another way, as cops you should be PREPARED to wield the authority, the power that has been entrusted to you--but you should absolutely NOT use it unless necessary. When these cops decided to arrest and charge this poor couple for reporting a crime (yes, infractions such as speeding are *crimes*), they abused their power and we should NOT forgive them simply because i
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Funny, I said the same thing back in '00.
...I hope to FUCKING god that isn't some kind of precedent.
/Florida voter
Let me rephrase something: The point of view you're supporting isn't ultra-libertarian, it's anarchist. Libertarians at least acknowledge the role of government in preventing people from inflicting bodily harm upon one another.
I don't mean anarchist in any pejorative sense, but I do think that most of their political suggestions are utterly ludicrous and provably ineffective.
Beer has been proven to prolong your life (yes, beer specifically) when drunk in moderation--2-3 per day (for males) reduces your lifelong chance of having a heart attack by around 30%-35% . No amount of smoking is proven to have any positive effects that I'm aware of. It's also kinda hard to unintentionally drink beer--again, as with cellphones, there is no secondhand effect.
Seriously, I can understand arguing that secondhand smoke hasn't been proven to cause harm, but I fail to comprehend people who acknowledge (or assume for the sake of argument) that it is harmful, but take the uber-libertarian view that smokers should have to right to poison non-smoker's air supply. One of the most basic functions of government is to prevent people from physically harming each other. Walking into a restaurant, privately owned or not, doesn't give anyone the right to harm me, and "my lungs" are definitely a part of "me". Would you argue that "roughhouse" restaurants should exist where, by walking in, your forfeit your right to NOT be assaulted or (since lung cancer is indeed fatal) even murdered? Would even children forfeit this right if they're brought there by their parents? (Where I live, only restaurants are forbidden to have indoor smoking--21 and up bars can permit it.)
Assuming for the sake of argument that secondhand smoke does increase one's risk of deadly diseases, I think the analogy is apt. Protection from bodily harm isn't something that can magically evaporate when you step foot on private property.
I asked my girlfriend--she didn't have a problem with it. Nor do I see how being "sanitary" has anything to do with it.
Don't get me wrong, I can see where you're coming from, and it's not something I'd do on a regular basis or anything, but on the 1-10 scale of assholishness don't even think it merits a "1", so long as you can conceal the sounds and/or your party doesn't have a problem with it. Annoying other people in a public restroom is another matter entirely, I admit.
That's because smoking in my vicinity causes me to breathe in toxic and radioactive gases. Cell phone use is merely annoying (and "secondhand RF" is completely negligible.) Slight difference there.
Oh yes, and that Nina was in his car while suffering a hangnail or recently-popped bleeding pimple or some such. (i.e. Single-drop blood detection means NOTHING.)
Yes, and it's just coincidence that she had an affair with a confessed serial killer (and said affair was supposedly the basis for the breakup of their marriage.) And it's ALSO a coincidence that Nina managed to secretly obtain Russian citizenship for her son two months before her disappearance (she secretly obtained Russian citizenship for her daughter years prior.) And it's also a coincidence that both children are now in Russia under the care of their maternal grandmother, who refuses to send them back to testify even though they were with Hans at the time during which he was supposedly committing this murder.
I don't know if Hans ever loved anybody. And I don't know whether or not he's an asshole like so many people claim. But to claim, without qualification, that he killed his wife in the face of such insanely suspicious circumstances is reprehensible. Maybe the police are hiding some crucial piece of evidence, but so far the only evidence they've presented is that Hans was a dick, and that he was living out of his car.
Agreed. On everything. I meant to mention selective enforcement, but it slipped my mind. And white collar crime is woefully under-punished--and under-defined. But I think I can still agree with you about all that and disagree on Ron Paul being a racist. Factual observations and/or reasonable speculative exaggerations based on those observations should never qualify anyone as a racist. You can argue that the guy's priorities are all mixed up if blue collar crime is really such a priority for him, but in that case politicians everywhere have their priorities mixed up.
95% seems excessive, but check out this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime#Statistics . In 1998, nearly one-third of all 20-29 year old black males in America were currently pending trial, in prison, or on parole (and this claim has two citations.) One_third. Now consider that this statistic doesn't include convicted black males who are no longer under parole. And consider that certain areas have a higher concentration of criminals than others (big cities having more because of their concentration of wealth and ease of evading law enforcement in their population density.) And also consider that Paul was accusing the D.C. cops of being ineffective (i.e. not catching the majority of the criminals)... I feel a tad sick in saying it, but if his accusation is true, I don't think that the 95% statistic is so obviously racist as you seem to think.
It's probably an exaggeration, yes, and but (provided we limit ourselves to young black men, and make the assumptions outlined above) it's not an obscene one. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the actual figure is in the vicinity of 75%, perhaps even higher. And before you peg me a racist, let me hasten to say that I am against the war on drugs, and the majority of those crimes are likely nonviolent drug crimes. Just because someone is a criminal does not make them a bad person; there are such things as unjust laws. Also, I don't believe that black people are in any way genetically predisposed to anything; any statistical discrepancies are most likely the generations-old leftovers of post-slavery (and post-discrimination) poverty.
On the Israeli note--it is a very sad thing that people cannot criticize Israel and Zionism without being accused of anti-Semitism. While I applaud many progressive Israeli policies, the Zionist movement really picked the worst possible location in the world for their homeland. I suppose it's now far too late to think about doing it elsewhere, but in the 60+ years since their sovereignty was declared, their government has done some horrific (and more than a few extremely stupid) things, which has just gone on to destabilize the region even more. Israel is kept alive in no small part by the United States' willingness to supply them with state of the art weaponry, including (as is widely assumed, but cannot be absolutely proven) nuclear weapons. On the whole I think that Israel has been a hell of a lot more civilized than their neighbors have been, but that doesn't mean we should continue to support them unilaterally--doing the "right" thing isn't right if it means destabilizing the region even further and pushing us closer to World War III. That's my own view of the matter--Paul's was about pro-Israel lobbyists having too much power. That may or may not be true, but simply putting forth the argument doesn't make him a racist. I agree, it *could* be an initial warning sign that he harbors deeper, more generalized (and crackpot) Jewish conspiracy theories, but it could also be a very sane and straightforward observation based on the fact that the United States is ONLY country (of any significant size) that consistently and usually unequivocally supports Israel in the UN.
*omniscient, not omnipotent.
No one can "ultimately prove" anything in this life. When someone says something doesn't exist, the sane and reasonable interpretation is "from what I've determined using my obviously only-human brain and inevitably-NON-OMNIPOTENT KNOWLEDGE." You would literally have to stick that preface before every single time you ever said something that wasn't true, even if you were just saying that you ate oatmeal for breakfast. How do you KNOW it was oatmeal? Someone could have snuck in while you were asleep and exchanged it for extremely convincing oatmeal-substitute. An obscenely unlikely proposition, but still possible.
And you've still dodged the issue--is stating the nonexistence of god fundamentally different than stating the nonexistence of leprechauns/FSMs/faries/dragons/etc. or isn't it?
Nice way to completely ignore all of my counter-examples. Do you have a problem with me saying "Leprechauns don't exist"? Yes, it's entirely possible that they exist and have all of these cool powers that let them hide themselves from humans. It's_possible. But is it fair to say someone is making a "faith statement" if they say that leprechauns don't exist?
So, do you say the same thing about leprechauns, the tooth fairy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (praise be his noodley appendage), invisible pink unicorns, dragons, one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eaters, or the Great Green Arkleseizure? Or ghosts, for that matter?
Just because someone denies the existence of something that we have absolutely no evidence for, does not mean that they are making a "faith statement." I think you misinterpret reasonable deniable for absolute, "could-not-possibly-exist" denial. Few true scientists will claim that there is absolutely no possibility of a god-like being existing. However, these same sciences will also grant the same (quite possibly even greater, depending on the scientist) possibility for the existence, somewhere in this universe, for a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater. Clearly, it's reasonable to deny the existence of the latter, since we have absolutely no proof of it, so it is therefore also reasonable to deny the existence of the former--not in absolute, I'm 100%-positive terms but in everyday "No, I'm pretty sure 'He' doesn't exist" terms.
Think about that word you justed used--product. I bought their PRODUCT--I did NOT sign a contract with them. And no, EULAs don't count because I didn't get a chance to agree to the terms *before* I bought the product. So tell me, why do you think that a company has the right to tell you how to use their product? If I sell you a car, I don't have the right to demand that you use Shell gas.
Ok, so why don't you guys give me non-anecdotal evidence showing that non-illegal use of modchips is so rare as to be insignificant? You can't denounce my use of anecdotal evidence if you have nothing better to show.
Ok, so why don't you give me non-anecdotal evidence showing that non-illegal use of modchips is so rare as to be insignificant?
The devices seized are used to copy and play Nintendo DS games offered unlawfully over the Internet, and the mod chips allow the play of pirated Wii discs or illegal copies of downloaded Nintendo game
They're also used to play games that aren't available for sale in the USA (and won't run on a North American Wii even if you import them legally), and they're used to play legal ("Fair Use") backups of game discs that have been damaged.
All of you MAFIAA shills can whine "oh but that's not what you guys are REALLY using them for!" all you want, but my both my sister and my girlfriend like Japanese date sims (weird, yes), and I've known several people who've had a game disc damaged beyond playability--usually by dogs or small children.
Reading the XKCD forums, apparently prior to the ninja incident someone actually sent RMS a katana (which, in the comic, he whips out to defend himself against them.) He didn't bring it to the debate with him, but someone did take some pictures of him holding it: http://www.gnu.org/people/jag/rms-with-katana/
He does not consider his appearance to be essential. He might not even consider his health to be absolutely essential. He does consider his cause to be essential, and that is what he chooses to spend his time and energy on.
He's not "dressing lazy"; IIRC he simply does not own a suit. He does not believe in wasting wealth on non-essential items; this enables him to live on a relatively small income while spending most of his time pursuing the ideals he cares about. In my opinion, this attitude is much more noble than your "Hey, there's a guy with a cheap wardrobe! What a disrespectful jerk!" attitude. Expecting someone to waste hundreds of dollars to dress up like a penguin (insert Linux joke here) just to show that they "respect" you is extremely childish. Respect is a quality of interaction between people--material goods have no inherent 'respect'.
And don't try to hide behind social custom. Just because some people are (by common custom) materialistic, elitist assholes doesn't mean you have to be too.
I could have seen a pedestrian a mile a way, and so too could he have seen me. This was a husky, heavy mountain bike--not a racing bike--and I was pedaling rather leisurely. And like I said, it was a very well lit sidewalk, both from the full moon and from the street lights. You might as well argue that the pedestrians be required to carry lights to prevent them from bumping into each other. Ray Bradbury was in part inspired to write Farenheight 451 after being stopped by a police officer for walking with a friend on a sidewalk at night. He--and I--were very much disturbed by the idea that merely walking, merely EXISTING on a public path after hours should be illegal.
The point is not the offense itself. If I had a headlight on my bike, the cop would've come up with something else to threaten me with. Hell, he approached me from BEHIND in his car, and I very much doubt that he could have clearly seen whether or not I had any light. If I had a headlight, he doubtless would have claimed I was drunkenly "weaving", just like they did when they pulled me over in my car (incidently, I passed their sobriety tests because I hadn't touched a drop of liquor either night.) He gave me the runaround for 15 minutes before he even mentioned the headlight thing--likely he and his partner were busy trying to come up with SOMETHING--and he still refused to give me a ticket or inform me if I was being charged with anything for quite a while longer, until after I volunteered to be frisked.
I didn't say I was the white Rodney King or anything. If mine was the biggest abuse of police power in this country, I would most gladly shut up and never mention it again, because in the end it was only an inconvenient 30-45 minute delay. But I believe my experiences are indicative of a larger, systemtic, ingrained philosophy amongst most of the police officers I've interacted with. The public are all criminals--most of them just haven't been caught yet--and criminals can be used to provide money for the PD and prestige for the arresting officer. If they let you walk with a warning, it's because they don't want to bother, or they want to feel good about themselves by showing your sorry, groveling ass some mercy, or they know that the charge won't stick (though sometimes even in this latter case, they'll charge you anyway... if you've personally offended them.)
The guy I referenced was doing nothing more than sitting, passively resisting the police. From what I understand he was an asshole about it, but I greatly object to the notion that ANY Ghandi-style passive resistence should be met with tazers (which are, as you may or may not be aware, potentially lethal weapons.)
But I do know that letting people simply get away with being shitty doesn't sit right with me.
You're missing the point. The woman DIDN'T get away with it--she was charged with battery. If my friend had been a police officer instead of a fry cook, it would have carried an even harsher sentence.
If you want to talk about prison reform, that's something else entirely. I do not believe that prisoners should be able to interact amongst themselves at all, nor do I believe in any prison luxuries (including non-educational televsion/books/magazines, cigarettes, etc.), nor do I believe that ANYONE convicted of a felony (or a repeat misdemeanor offender) should EVER be released without performing an extended work-release program and at least making a genuine effort to appear to be reformed. "Paying their debt" be damned; they shouldn't EVER be released if the parole board has any reasonable suspicion whatsoever that they will commit more crimes.
So you see, I'm not a soft-hearted liberal at all--I just do not believe in vigilante justice. You would have me take the cop at his word that the suspect deserved it--sorry, but NO human is that trustworthy. Cops are cops--they aren't judges or juries. I grant you that judges and juries and the general public at large probably don't respect just how tough it is being a cop, but I have already outlined how and why this should not be an excuse. If it's really that much of a dirty and nasty job, let's just pay 'em more. Hell, I'll take the occasional insult and even the occasional punch or kick *without* overreacting if they'll pay me $100,000/year to do it.
If someone punches a cop, they are guilty of battery on a law enforcement officer, and the extra punishment incurred therein should be sufficient justice. If you disagree, then lobby to change the law, or change our prison philosophy. Cops punishing assholes on their own, outside of the courtroom ISN'T the answer. Not only are they biased against they criminals, but they're biased in favor of themselves--as this story proves, far too many cops (and perhaps DAs as well?) are assholes themselves.
The police are in the business of putting criminals in jail, not inacting their own brand of physical justice. I'm not saying that every single combative action needs to be carefully mulled over--I'm just saying that when a woman is CLEARLY hurt and bleeding badly and in no state to hurt or threaten to hurt anyone, you do NOT need to go over and hurt her some more. You put her in jail--you let the justice system do what it's supposed to do. In the heat of the moment, sure, a cop can strike back, but by the time my friend realized she'd been hit the woman was already on the ground and out of reach. She would have had to gone outside of the building or thrown something at her or seomthing.
Similarly, that guy who was tazered and pepper sprayed for refusing to present his ID card in a college library was just being an asshole. There's no reason to tazer an asshole, and it was downright abusive (if not criminal) for them to do so. They're menat to ARREST law-breaking assholes. If they don't want to move, carry them. If they violently throw off your grip, THEN you spray and taze 'em. If they throw a punch, beat 'em until they go down (but not AFTER they go down.) If they draw a gun, blow their fucking heads off (but stop shooting if they drop the gun.) How hard is that to comprehend?
They are treated like shit day in and day out verbally and physcially by douchebags like yourself who love to claim they "know their rights" (and rarely know much of anything).
So why am I a douchebag? Because I think that the cops should not be able to arrest a couple and charge them with stalking for REPORTING A CRIME simply because they don't like the fact that the criminal was, in this case, a cop? Because I think that they should show restraint when physical force isn't necessary? The fact that your cop friends didn't do anything questionable proves NOTHING, because they had a civilian riding along (you.)
Oh and since I apparently don't know my rights, would you care to enlighten me? Let me guess, I have the right to have my ass kicked by someone wearing blue if I don't put my hands behind my back fast enough...
They're far better people than you could ever hope to be, and I hope you remember that next time you need a cop.
Simply being able to tolerate a shitty job doesn't make you a better person--by that argument, I'm a better person than you for having to work at McDonald's for a few months. Of course, not every cop abuses their power, but the system as a whole ENCOURAGES such abuse.
I've been pulled over a grand total of three times in my life so far--twice for "weaving", both times in nearly the EXACT same spot in the road (where the lines shift slightly, and thus you HAVE to weave a little.) If I drive by there later than 11 pm, more often then not I'll see another car pulled over in the exact same spot. It's total bullshit, and it wouldn't be happening if local districts didn't receive money for the tickets they give out--the police department should be well-funded, PERIOD. They should not be forced to (nor have the incentive to) hand out more tickets just to increase their budget. The other time I got pulled over was when I was riding my bicycle on the sidewalk at night. The officer informed me that riding on the sidewalk was perfectly legal in that area, but riding without a headlight was not. Not a reflector, a_mother_fucking_HEADLIGHT. On the sidewalk, in the full moon, on a road with plenty of street lights, without any other pedestrians in sight. Yeah, a headlight was REALLY going to make a difference if someone was drunk enough to run off the road entirely and hit me. The officer refused to say whether he was going to give me a ticket or take me jail or what--he refused to charge me with a crime or turn me loose--he just let me stand there and babble and kiss his ass and finally, after I voluntarily let him search me, he let me go with a warning. He didn't give a FLYING FUCK about no goddamned headlight--he wanted to search me (a long-haired guy riding a bike alone at night), and since I had places to go and people to see, I waived my constitutional rights just to get out of there quicker.
I'm lucky enough to be a middle-class white guy, so (fortunately for me) that's the extent of my 'horror' stories. I could tell you some of my friends', but you'd probably dismiss 'em as hearsay (or bullshit.) So, why don't we stick to the well-known FACTS, then... every single time these news articles come up, you fuckers have to come out here and defend them. Why can't you defend your honest cop friends while simultaneously denouncing abuses of power such as this? Better yet, why can't THEY denounce their abusive friends while simultaneously asking for more funds/personel/equipment/whatever?
One of the requirements for being a cop should be obeying the law. Sorry if you think that's unreasonable--I assure you that those of us sane people here in the real world think that it's very reasonable indeed. If a cop is shown to be repeatedly breaking the law (especially an off-duty cop with no official reason to speed), at the very least he should be told to "knock it off." That's the maximum amount of leniency I should expect (and even then a lot of people would decry an automatic get-out-of-a-ticket-free
I love dragging out this story every time the police aplogists come out of the woodwork.
:weeps:) because my other jobs had fallen through. My good friend Pam was working drive through, when a large, pissed off black woman pulled to the pick-up window and tried to order something. We were in the middle of a rush (if you don't understand what a "rush" is in fast food parlance, count yourself blessed and imagine instead, say, the first 10 minutes from Saving Private Ryan), so Pam told her "sorry, we don't take orders from this window, you'llhave to drive around again."
Many years ago, I was working a brief stint at McDonalds (yes, McDonalds
The woman was... displeased. She got out of the car, started berating my friend quit severely, tried to pry open the window while Pam held it shut, then, as god as my witness, she punched THROUGH the plate glass window, hitting Pam in the face.
Through all this, my friend mantained professionalism, did not insult the customer and after she was hit, calmly walked away and called the police. You see, even the lowliest fry cooks are expected to have PROFESSIONALISM. We were not allowed to yell at customers, let alone spit in their food. We did our jobs as civilly as possible, despite the fact that it was gruling and we were making wage.
My friend, the FRY COOK, observed that the woman had done a VERY stupid thing and was now bleeding profusely everywhere and was in no shape to threaten anyone. What would your average cop have done, if a large black woman had slugged HIM across the chin? Would he have allowed her to fall to the ground and bleed and cry in peace? Or would he first teach her a lesson? At the very least, I'd say, she would walk away with a few extra nasty brusies. If the cop was in a bad mood, probably a broken bone or a concussion. I've seen, on a Cops-like reality show, the police tazer a (black) man who was doing nothing other than "walking towards them in a threatening manner", when I could see nothing even remotely threatening in his shuffling about (a good 15+ feet away--they were the projectile tazers, and his hands were in plain sight.) The police were PROUD to defend their actions, and confident enough to release the footage to the producers of the show (so, I wondered--what was on the tape they felt too questionable to release?) After being shocked, the man fell face first onto cement, most likely resulting in severe contusions and hairline fractures.
But this war story of mine is just an extreme example. Trust me, McDonald's has a neverending supply of asshole customers. The fact of the matter is, you can walk into nearly any retail business--insulting, cussing, being as big of an asshole as you want--and the workers there (so long as they aren't self-employeed business owners) will generally refrain from retaliation. They will DO THEIR JOBS with as least some semblance of professionalism.
But you'd have to be CRAZY to try the same asshole routine with a cop. They do NOT give a rats ass about fairness and professionalism unless you kiss the they walk on.
Yeah yeah yeah, I'm SURE it's a shitty job, but--in the words of Carlos Mencia--when they give you a sidearm, a second gun to strap to your ankle, pepper spray (actually, more often it's a chemical mace unavailable to the public) to blind them, a stick to beat 'em down with, a bulletproof vest to protect you from return fire, a shotgun in a trunk, a dog in the back seat and a radio so you can call for backup, you just might have to think to yourself: you know, I think some shit might be going down. To put it another way, as cops you should be PREPARED to wield the authority, the power that has been entrusted to you--but you should absolutely NOT use it unless necessary. When these cops decided to arrest and charge this poor couple for reporting a crime (yes, infractions such as speeding are *crimes*), they abused their power and we should NOT forgive them simply because i