20% per year is not outrageously high. If a business makes 20% profit per year, it would be doing fairly well, but not spectacularly. The problem is with GUARANTEEING that rate of return to others. That's when it becomes fraud. But simply stating that you're making that much, especially when it's true, is perfectly legitimate.
You can't make laws as clear as technical documents. That's a quixotic notion held by those who fail to appreciate that other people see things vastly different from how they do. The difference between an RFC and a law is that you can reasonably expect people to follow the RFC because it is in their own best interest to do so. A law, on the other hand, will always have an exception, a border case, or some other mitigating circumstance that will require interpretation. That is the job of the courts and lawyers.
Even accepting your statement about what is or isn't the problem with the legal system, it is the way it is and that's not going to change in the near future. Is your proposed solution simply not to solve the problem?
And of course the skill of the lawyers matters. It has always mattered. That's why we don't let just anybody be a lawyer. In case you didn't realize, being an effective lawyer requires a great deal of skill. The ability to analyze a case, compare points of law between present and past cases, and present a compelling argument are all talents that are learned. As much as you would like to believe that the facts are always completely self evident and are the only thing that should matter, that's just not the case. If it were, everybody would have exactly the same political opinion about everything. Or would you say that our political system so perverted that leadership skill actually matters?
According to the article, they only invest in cases that are pretty much a surefire win for the plaintiff. This makes sense, because if they're in it to make money, then cases that are likely to be questionable are a bad investment.
Seems to me that they're actually doing a public service, by allowing little guys who can't afford to take on big corporations who have clearly done them wrong to proceed with a potentially expensive lawsuit. No longer can the party with deeper pockets simply fight a war of attrition and hope to run the other guy dry. If the plaintiff ends up winning he gets more than he would have gotten had he simply given up, and if somebody else makes a buck off it as well, then so much the better.
Too bad it's the Dingoo A320 and not the Airbus A320, which would have been considerably more impressive, if somewhat less practical. I'm not sure I would want to see what happens in the event of kernel panic, though.
What is that picture supposed to be in the article? "What New Zealand might look like?"
And why is Idle's formatting still so broken? I'm on Firefox 3 on a Mac, and the titles are invisible and the text box I'm typing in now is only about 20 characters wide.
In Anglo-American based legal systems, finding of fact made by the jury are not appealable unless clearly wrong to any reasonable person. This principle is enshrined in the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that "...no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
So, no, findings of a jury can't generally be appealed. This is not just me saying this. This is in the Constitution. You are very confused about the nature of the legal system. You're conflating findings of fact with findings of law. They are two completely separate things.
That is, the jury never deliberates on anything and therefore the judge has not counteracted the jury at all.
Why do you think it's called a "directed verdict"? Because traditionally, the judge directed the jury to come up with that verdict. It's really just a matter of formal procedure that the judgment is entered before the defense has presented its case, in much the same way that the bottom of the 9th inning of a baseball game isn't played when the home team is winning. And if you'd poked around a bit more, you might have discovered the concept of a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, which is EXACTLY what I was talking about. The jury decides one thing, and the judge changes it to something else. So your belief that the decision of the jury is "sacrosanct" is flat out wrong. But if there is going to be such a change, it must be done by the trial judge. Once the verdict is entered, it cannot be appealed. Only rulings of law can be appealed. While an appeal may grant a new trial, and hence a new chance for the facts to be tried, the findings of fact themselves are not appealed. Get that through your head. It's important. That's why it's in the Constitution.
Fine, if you want to be extremely pedantic, you are right. Juries cannot simply stand up and say "this law is unconstitutional" and have it be so.
This is not pedantic. This is a fundamental principle of our legal system and you would do well to understand it. The practice of jury nullification is enshrined in no legal document. It has no legal weight in and of itself. That juries can use their position of power to push for social change is not a new concept. But there's nothing particularly special about juries refusing to convict as the legal system is concerned. They are free to decide whatever they like for whatever reason they like. That is why we have juries. But their influence is limited to one specific application of the law, rather than the nature of the law itself. That is a power reserved specifically for judges. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. It is one of the key principles on which our legal system is based.
You said, and I quote: "It should NEVER be up to the jury to make determinations of what the law is." The word "should" implies subjectivity and I responded in kind that I believe the opposite to be true, that the jury should make determinations about the law.
Fine, we're going to play the semantics game. I meant to say that in practice, the job of deciding questions of law is not expected to be delegated to the jury. Not whether the jury ought to be doing it or not.
And you don't know what you're talking about with regards to appeals. Findings of law, as decided by the judge, can be appealed. Findings of fact, as determined by the jury (or the judge in a bench trial) cannot, except in very unusual circumstances.
The judge can't say "you're wrong" and send the jury back until the come up with the right answer.
Actually, a directed verdict is the process of doing just that. The only reason a judge cannot enter a guilty plea after a finding of not guilty is because it violates double jeopardy. Doing it the other way is fine, though.
The main point is that the jury is entrusted to find the facts in the case. That they can disagree with the law and use that as an excuse to find the facts to be other than what they actually are is merely a quirk of the legal system, no matter how important some might find that quirk to be. The jury never decides matters of law. Claiming that they do through jury nullification shows a lack of understanding about the legal system. That is why it is not relevant to this discussion. While it may seem like the jury is deciding matters of law, they are, as far as the legal process is concerned, still only finders of fact. They are free to find the facts any way they please, within reason. But jury nullification does not invalidate the law. A ruling from a court does. That is the big difference.
Thats because you subscribe to the idea that intentional misinterpretation and misunderstanding rises to the level of legitimate public debate.
It's ALL open to interpretation. That's my point. And you just proved it with your long rambling diatribe about what the Second Amendment means. If there were really no debate, it would be unnecessary for you to argue so vehemently for one interpretation over another. I only picked the Second Amendment because the debate over the meaning is so well known. It does exist, regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about the merits of such debate.
Let me ask you something. Does the right to keep and bear arms cover, say, bazookas? High explosives? Nuclear weapons? Biological weapons? Again, I don't really care what you think the answer is as much as the fact that you acknowledge that there is some reasonable question over what exactly it covers. And this is my point. No matter how crystal clear you attempt to make some law, and how much you plan for it to cover every possible case, somebody will find an exception. And it is the job of the courts to deal with those exceptions, regardless of whether they are truly "legitimate" or not.
I am aware of the concept of jury nullification, and I am not addressing that here because it is a controversial issue and one that is worthy of a discussion in its own right. It also has no bearing on this discussion. Even when the jury refuses to convict based on an unjust law, they are not finding issue with the law itself, but only its application given the current set of facts. They are effectively finding that, while the facts may fit the strict definition of the law, there are mitigating circumstances that do not allow them to find the defendant guilty for whatever reason. The jury does not, and cannot, rule on points of law. They are only allowed to rule on facts. That is why decisions of a jury, unlike decisions of a judge, are generally not allowed to be appealed. They are also not legally binding on any other case, unlike the decisions of a judge.
Never in my life have I seen somebody so spectacularly fail to get the point.
Many people disagree with your interpretation. It is a well known point of contention in the U.S. Constitution. I could have just as easily used the Interstate Commerce Clause, but I chose the Second Amendment because the public debate is more widely recognized. The merits of such a debate are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.
Translation: the High Priest In Charge pulls out of his exalted ass arbitrary "interpretations" to his liking (which the poor sheep in the jury box are "unqualified" to judge - for "their own good") and instructs the dumbfounded sheeple to do as he exactly as he tells them, thus restricting any and all options they ever thought they had.
Ah, now we come to the crux of your argument. You are smarter than all of the rest of us "sheeple", so you should be put in charge of deciding what is and isn't a good law. And your nonsensical metaphors and fanciful characterizations, while colorful, fail to convey anything more than your own intellectual snobbishness.
The jury instructions you cited, while somewhat lengthy, do not seem overly complicated--particularly when you are familiar with the facts of the case and can also ask the judge for clarification of any parts you do not understand. They certainly do not seem impenetrable by a person of average intelligence. It is somewhat ironic, given your perception of yourself as much smarter than the "sheeple" who are the intended recipients of those instructions, that you find them daunting. The fact that you can't comprehend simple concepts when more than a couple of them are strung together does not render the entire system defective.
Which commandments Christianity solidified (and which then Islam made harsher) and which are indirectly responsible for Christians outnumbering Jews by a factor of a 1000 to 1 or so (Islam having an even higher ratio). You should ponder this relationship.
Even granting your dubious premise that Christianity created simpler rather than less complex laws, this is an unsupported argument post hoc, ergo propter hoc and does not merit further response.
Simply to remove the possibility of conflict of interest. It is the desire of investigators to discover crime and that makes some of them to lose objectivity. That is why courts (or some similar mechanism) are still a good idea, irrespective of how clear the law gets. If the law said that you cannot have more than 2 apples on your person, no exceptions, and you were accused of having 3, the accuser (or an arresting officer or some other functionary) would have to prove to your peers (i.e. a jury) that you indeed had them 3 apples. Otherwise a mere accusation, backed up by a friendly co-worker would be enough. Note that this does not change at all if you were to be accused of having 3 apples in a 2-apple country or of committing mass murder with weapons of mass destruction.
And how do you define having apples? Do you have to physically hold the apples? Do they just have to be within your physical control? How do you define that? Is it enough if they are in your house, whether you're there or not? What about if you're only renting and your landlord put them in a locked closet without your knowledge? Does it matter if you have a mortgage or not? What happens if you have two apples, and somebody throws a third apple at you? Or you don't know that you have three apples, because somebody sneaked one into your pocket while you weren't looking? Maybe you're blind and somebody told you that what you were picking up was an orange. You can come up with an infinite number of variations on these circumstances, each of which must be tested on a case by case basis to arrive at a fair result. Nobody will be able to predict in advance how a court should rule in every conceivable circumstance.
If it does, it was a wrong law to have to begin with. Otherwise it just becomes better, not more complex. Example: "You may have no more then 2 apples on your person at any time" can be confused by someone coming up with an apple-orange hybrid, or introducing sliced apples etc. Depending upon the intent of the law, in can be re-formulated as "You may have no more then 2 plant-matter objects on your person" or "you may have no more than 100g of plant matter on your person" etc. Not that the law does not get more complex, nor longer. It just becomes different, and either more or less clear and easier or harder to test against.
Never mind the fact that your solution calls for vastly expanding the law beyond its original intent simply for the purpose of clarity, which is a frightening enough proposition if you truly are in favor of that. No matter how specific or general you make the law, there is no law that has no exceptions. And if there are exceptions, you cannot know in advance what those exceptions will be.
Not it is not logically inconsistent. This same problem exists in science, where the incomplete, wrong and ill-thought out systems are usually more complex then the accurate ones covering all cases. Example: before Copernicus the leading explanation for movement of celestial objects was a convoluted circles-within-circles scheme which attempted (poorly) to account for all observable evidence. The present model of Solar system, which covers all evidence (which previously was a long list of "exceptions" and "what if" scenarios) in one swoop, with a much more elegant and conceptually simple.
This just proves my point. Do you not see the difference between scientific principles and the laws of society? Let me spell it out for you
Err, no. Juries must decide if a law was broken or not. To do so they must not only find facts, but also compare them to the template of the law, which is where the process falls apart as the laws are so fucked up that juries have next to an impossible task of figuring out if the "law" was broken or not.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! You couldn't be more wrong about this, and it shows you have a fundamental lack of understanding about how the legal system works. Your aversion to it is not surprising, as people have a tendency to deride things they cannot or will not understand.
The process works like this. The two sides present the case in front of the jury. The judge and jury hear the case. The JUDGE makes determinations of law, and for the purposes of the case, that is the law as far as the jury is concerned. When the parties are finished, the judge explains to the jury the possible verdicts they can come back with in simple, straightforward terms much like you are proposing. This is why jury instructions are so critical, and why quite a few appeals turn on whether juries are given proper instructions or not.
A typical instruction will be go basically like this: "If you find that the defendant killed the victim with his car intentionally and with malice, then you must return a verdict of guilty of homicide. If you find that the defendant killed the victim with his car because he was not paying adequate attention to the road, you must return a verdict of guilty of manslaughter. And if you find that the defendant was paying sufficient attention and this was simply an unavoidable accident, you must return a verdict of not guilty." It should NEVER be up to the jury to make determinations of what the law is; only whether the set of facts conform to that law, as it is explained by the judge. If they have questions, they are obligated to ask the judge for clarification rather than attempting to make that determination on their own. In truth, it's about as close to your proposed system as one could hope for. If that is unsuitable to you, then you are contradicting yourself.
You should ponder upon why Judeo-Christian religions (of which Islam is an off-shoot) are so vastly popular. And if you do, you will find that it is an average person's deep-seated desire for a concise, clear set of rules to govern society that is at the very heart of it. Mock that desire it at your own peril.
I disagree. They are popular for the same reason all religion is popular--they give meaning to the meaningless. It has nothing to do with wanting a set of laws that cover every situation. In point of fact, Jewish tradition does not prescribe a set of laws that must be meticulously followed. Rather, there are a few such laws--the commandments--and a set of guidelines for moral behavior. Much of Jewish Talmudic tradition, for example, focuses on interpreting, challenging, and clarifying laws set out in the Torah. And even the experts in the Talmud will be the first to admit that it is impossible for them to conceive of every possible situation in advance.
You always need an arbitration process to prevent abuse.
Why? What is the job of the courts, if not to interpret the law? Under your proposal, there would be no need for judges, because laws would be clear and concise in every set of circumstances. The possibility of one particular enforcement agent misapplying (not "abusing", because under what you propose no such abuse would be possible) the law could be resolved by a simple appeals process whereby the direct supervisor of, say, the police officer makes a determination whether the law was appropriately enforced. Under your system, that would be all that the courts do anyway, because it would not be up to them to determine if the law is fair or not--only whether it applies in this circumstance. Anybody could do that, right?
And that is different from, say, the US constitution, how exactly?
Tell me the precise settled meaning of the Second Amendment, for example, and you will have answered your own question. The Constitution is a guideline establishing how the government should be run and what rights and responsibilities are held by the federal government, the states, and the people. It is not a precise code of laws that is not open to interpretation.
Bullshit. Well designed laws, even though they can be changed, require less and less modifications as more refined they become. Bullshit, byzantine, intellectual diarrhoea "laws" are in a state of constant chaotic flux and become more and more confused and voluminous as the time passes, because confusion and chaos are their very purpose.
Your argument falls apart when you realize that, no matter how carefully crafted and precise you think your laws are, somebody will always find an exception, a "but what if", a border case, or some other situation that is not directly covered by the law. In order to cover this particular case, the law would need to be modified to add an exception, or you risk the ambiguity of not knowing how that same situation should be resolved the next time it comes up. The law therefore becomes more and more complex with time. You simply can't make a law cover more situations adequately by making it simpler, because the simpler you make the law the more likely you are to find exceptions to it.
Again, bullshit. Religions do that because they have no mechanism to correct their "commandments". Human laws do. But that does not mean that a correction must always be uniformly in the direction of more complexity. In fact the whole art of law-making is to go in the precisely the opposite direction, to formulate simple laws in such a way as to cover all cases.
Again, this is logically inconsistent. Simpler means more general, and it's the specifics that are always the thorny issue in a legal system.
This has nothing to do with "subtlety" and "nuance". It has to do with byzantine, arcane, sets of incomprehensible to an
Most of juries have no clue if the decisions they have reached are actually just and remain conflicted long after the trial. That alone tells you about the quality of "justice" that is being served.
Juries are finders of fact, not of law. If what you say is true--and I don't think you have any basis whatsoever for claiming this about "most" juries--then it actually cuts against you. When the facts themselves are so ambiguous as to leave juries conflicted about whether they have actually correctly decided what those facts are, how do you expect to create laws that apply fairly to facts that can't be determined to any degree of certainty?
I agree. We should eliminate the need for lawyers by moving to a religious law system like they have in Middle Eastern countries. It's pretty straightforward. There's one text that we all follow--not too much for the average person to memorize. Laws are interpreted by those doing the enforcing, so in most cases we wouldn't even need a court system. Disputes are settled by consulting the book, and the authority of said book is final. And we wouldn't ever want to update the book, because that would lead to the kind of instability and uncertainty you're objecting to. If your case doesn't fall under one of the predefined situations, we just find the closest one and go with that.
This is the only way to create a uniform system that is applied fairly in all situations. This has worked particularly well where it has been applied--witness the logical and fair conclusions that are regularly reached by the enforcement of zero-tolerance policies in schools, for example. You're absolutely correct that the problem is not that individuals may find themselves in differing situations and thus need the law applied differently to reach a reasonable result, but that judges and lawyers have too long been allowed to permit such vague concepts as subtlety and nuance to cloud the issue.
I mean, let's look at the numbers here. With only seven billion people in the world, there can't possibly be more than a few hundred different kinds of disputes that ever come up. A thousand, tops. So why would we ever need more laws than that? And why would we ever need to interpret those laws on a case by case basis? I wouldn't call our current society "lawless"--I'd call it out and out anarchy.
Again, you admit that the two statements are "connected" by "attitude" at best. You've gone from making a specific statement of fact (people think that censoring child porn and censoring political speech are the same thing) to a vague general statement of opinion (people are unreasonably afraid of the threat of authoritarianism). I think you understand the difference between these two, and why shifting your premise from the former to the latter is dishonest, particularly when you claim you're not doing so.
The fact is you couldn't prove your former statement, because it's not true. So you're making the latter claim, which can't really be proven as it's a matter of opinion. So not only are you begging that question, you're trying to substitute your opinion for fact.
There are really only two options here. Either find two quotes that explicitly say what you said in the first place, i.e.:
you see people all the time, especially on slashdot, actually saying "country A censors child porn so how can it criticize another country for censoring political opinion?"
Or admit that you are a liar and that statement is untrue. I'm not interested in your opinion on what the "attitude" of a statement is, or how you twist and interpret people's words to mean what you want them to mean. You made the claim that people say that. So you back it up with proof. Not opinions. Not wild interpretations. Facts are what we deal in here.
I await your next pathetic attempt to weasel your way out of admitting you lied.
Once again, you fail to get the point that you can't simply shift the goalposts once you've started losing. I have no interest in debating the "merits" of your silly strawman argument and I never did. It is obvious that you cannot defend your lies and misrepresentations. You have no ground left to stand on But please do continue with the gratuitous name calling. You're only continuing to embarrass yourself.
Never mind the fact that the quote says nothing about child porn OR authoritarian states. (Do you really disagree with the notion that having a system in place to censor one kind of speech makes it easier for a government to censor another kind? Because that's all that quote says to those of us capable of reading things objectively). Your premise has changed. You started out saying:
you see people all the time, especially on slashdot, actually saying "country A censors child porn so how can it criticize another country for censoring political opinion?
You're now saying:
a lot of retards here think we are a heartbeat away from outright authoritarian statehood, because we censor child porn
I guess if you can't prove what you set out to prove, change what it is you set out to prove (not that you have been able to adequately demonstrate either one). Not only that, but you still haven't found a SINGLE quote that even mentions the censorship of child porn. I'm afraid there is only one dishonest person here, intellectually or otherwise. You.
You also failed to answer the question I posed. You cannot state that the quote says that liberal countries' censorship of child porn and authoritarian countries' censorship of political speech are the same, or even that they are functionally or morally equivalent. Or even that one necessarily leads to the other. But if we go by your original premise, that is what you would need to show. That people believe that censoring child porn is morally no better than censoring political speech, and therefore countries that do the former can't criticize those that do the latter. I can only presume that you cede the point, and thus, your entire argument.
If I were to challenge you to find two anti-Microsoft comments you could easily do it. And no, they wouldn't have to mimic your exact words (and you don't apparently know the meaning of the word "pedantically"). But they would have to be clearly anti-Microsoft. Comments about IBM wouldn't be acceptable, nor would comments contrasting specific problems with Microsoft software against open source. They would have to be clearly anti-Microsoft to the average reader. You, on the other hand, apparently cannot find two comments that say what you want them to say. Never mind finding 90% of the posts on Slashdot--you can't find a damn one.
You have given us nothing but rhetoric. Even the threads you cited plainly don't say what you want them to say. You have a lot of nerve talking about intellectual honesty when you have been called out on your lies multiple times and still cling to them.
I have explained to you time and time again why even the examples you have given say exactly the opposite of what you are claiming. You have ignored this. You have done nothing but regurgitate the same lies over and over again.
But here we go. As Zappa said, one more time for the world!
Heck, the Australian and German governments filter their entire countries, for ostentatious "think of the children" reasons, but all it takes is a flip of a switch for it to go political. Neither country historically has much of a problem with certain kinds of political censorship.
This is a quote you provided as an example. And yet, it says EXACTLY the opposite of what you're pretending it does. Specifically, the poster differentiates between "protecting the children" censorship and "political" censorship. The switch metaphor couldn't be any clearer. What they are saying is that one may lead to the other, and you can't deny the possibility of that. You can argue about the likelihood of it happening, or whether it is worth censoring immoral material at the cost of potentially stifling freedom of speech. One thing you cannot do--at least, not without rightfully being called a liar--is what you have done; that is, you cannot say that the poster is saying they are the same thing, or even that they are functionally equivalent.
Respond to that. Explain how the poster says that censoring child porn and political speech are the same thing. Not that one leads to the other. Not that both are wrong. HOW THE POSTER SAYS THEY ARE THE SAME THING. This is the crux of your argument, after all. You provided the quote, so now you defend your position on that quote.
If you respond in any other way, it is tantamount to an admission of dishonesty because you cannot support the position you so vehemently advanced without changing the parameters. So go on, let's see you try. It'll be fun. But in all honesty, you'd have an easier time tying to prove the existence of unicorns.
Find QUOTES. Or it doesn't happen. Not links to pages that kind of maybe say something tangentially related to what you're talking about. Not assertions that it's somehow my job to prove a negative. I pose to you the same challenge as the original responder to your comment.
Quote me two posts on Slashdot, with links TO THE ACTUAL POST, that say that censorship of anything at all is the same as censoring political speech. And only posts that say that. Not posts talking about government restrictions in general. Not posts expressing concern that governments in the west may be trying to suppress political speech.
Let's put this another way. Your hypothesis is as follows: "On Slashdot, there are many people who say that censorship of any sort of speech is the same as censoring only political speech." Now support your hypothesis with specific examples.
But I wouldn't bother wasting the effort if I were you. Practically nobody believes that shouting "fire" in a crowded theater shouldn't be prevented or punished. Just as very few believe that producing child porn shouldn't be punished. Or that libel laws shouldn't be enforced. That's certainly not the prevailing opinion on Slashdot. Therefore, your argument really has no basis in reality.
that it is a common moronic refrain on slashdot that censoring something as obviously vile as child porn in the west is the same as what china and iran do to political dissidents
Nobody has ever made this claim except you.
i have proven my point, and can find lots more proof. its rock solid
If you have, then so have I.
the links i provided actually adhere to my claim. yours do not- which is precisely your point, that they don't adhere to what you are claiming. you are saying i am doing the same thing: my links don't support my claim
I am honestly impressed that the Socratic Method is not completely lost on you. I am also impressed with your inability to understand the point.
but you're wrong. would like to analyze a link of mine? show it does not support my claim?
There is nothing else anybody can say to respond to your nonsense except to reiterate that what you're quoting doesn't say what you're claiming it does. None of the links you reference make any mention of child porn. Practically none of them even mention censorship, and those that do are only talking about political censorship.
It is not good enough to simply point at some quotations and say "See? These say what I want them to say!" THEY... DO... NOT. Any more than the links I provided say anything relevant to my point. You seem to be capable of recognizing this when other people apply it to yourself.
If you really believe what you are saying, then you are doing a really miserable job explaining it. Hardly surprising, given your piss-poor communication skills. But nonetheless, simply willing things to be the case over and over again doesn't prove your point. Even when you directly quote the material and respond to it, the best you can come up with is a bunch of non sequiturs, most of which don't even go to your point in the first place. Unless you somehow equate people being concerned with having their rights taken away with defending kiddie porn?
Try actually choosing a direct quote from the ones listed above and explaining in a rational manner how it states that blocking child porn and government censorship of political speech are the same thing. Clearly nobody has been able to follow your line of reasoning so far, so it behooves you to clarify it rather than asking us to prove a negative--something you should know is impossible, particularly when you haven't articulated a lucid position in the first place.
But I don't really expect you to do that. So I would love to hear whatever asinine response you have prepared to embarrass yourself with yet again. I could do this all day!
That's not a refutation. You still lose. Sorry you're too stupid to actually provide a logical answer. My point was perfectly reasonable, and I backed it up with valid evidence. Your making jokes just shows that you can't really refute what I was saying. Again, I challenge you to follow these extremely simple directions: Either demonstrate that what I was saying doesn't prove my point, or you admit defeat.
Slashdot Mirror
And replacing them with cancerous elements in the new system that are in favor of change merely for its own sake, regardless of the effect it has.
20% per year is not outrageously high. If a business makes 20% profit per year, it would be doing fairly well, but not spectacularly. The problem is with GUARANTEEING that rate of return to others. That's when it becomes fraud. But simply stating that you're making that much, especially when it's true, is perfectly legitimate.
You can't make laws as clear as technical documents. That's a quixotic notion held by those who fail to appreciate that other people see things vastly different from how they do. The difference between an RFC and a law is that you can reasonably expect people to follow the RFC because it is in their own best interest to do so. A law, on the other hand, will always have an exception, a border case, or some other mitigating circumstance that will require interpretation. That is the job of the courts and lawyers.
Even accepting your statement about what is or isn't the problem with the legal system, it is the way it is and that's not going to change in the near future. Is your proposed solution simply not to solve the problem?
And of course the skill of the lawyers matters. It has always mattered. That's why we don't let just anybody be a lawyer. In case you didn't realize, being an effective lawyer requires a great deal of skill. The ability to analyze a case, compare points of law between present and past cases, and present a compelling argument are all talents that are learned. As much as you would like to believe that the facts are always completely self evident and are the only thing that should matter, that's just not the case. If it were, everybody would have exactly the same political opinion about everything. Or would you say that our political system so perverted that leadership skill actually matters?
According to the article, they only invest in cases that are pretty much a surefire win for the plaintiff. This makes sense, because if they're in it to make money, then cases that are likely to be questionable are a bad investment.
Seems to me that they're actually doing a public service, by allowing little guys who can't afford to take on big corporations who have clearly done them wrong to proceed with a potentially expensive lawsuit. No longer can the party with deeper pockets simply fight a war of attrition and hope to run the other guy dry. If the plaintiff ends up winning he gets more than he would have gotten had he simply given up, and if somebody else makes a buck off it as well, then so much the better.
Too bad it's the Dingoo A320 and not the Airbus A320, which would have been considerably more impressive, if somewhat less practical. I'm not sure I would want to see what happens in the event of kernel panic, though.
What is that picture supposed to be in the article? "What New Zealand might look like?"
And why is Idle's formatting still so broken? I'm on Firefox 3 on a Mac, and the titles are invisible and the text box I'm typing in now is only about 20 characters wide.
From trier of fact:
In Anglo-American based legal systems, finding of fact made by the jury are not appealable unless clearly wrong to any reasonable person. This principle is enshrined in the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that "...no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
So, no, findings of a jury can't generally be appealed. This is not just me saying this. This is in the Constitution. You are very confused about the nature of the legal system. You're conflating findings of fact with findings of law. They are two completely separate things.
That is, the jury never deliberates on anything and therefore the judge has not counteracted the jury at all.
Why do you think it's called a "directed verdict"? Because traditionally, the judge directed the jury to come up with that verdict. It's really just a matter of formal procedure that the judgment is entered before the defense has presented its case, in much the same way that the bottom of the 9th inning of a baseball game isn't played when the home team is winning. And if you'd poked around a bit more, you might have discovered the concept of a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, which is EXACTLY what I was talking about. The jury decides one thing, and the judge changes it to something else. So your belief that the decision of the jury is "sacrosanct" is flat out wrong. But if there is going to be such a change, it must be done by the trial judge. Once the verdict is entered, it cannot be appealed. Only rulings of law can be appealed. While an appeal may grant a new trial, and hence a new chance for the facts to be tried, the findings of fact themselves are not appealed. Get that through your head. It's important. That's why it's in the Constitution.
Fine, if you want to be extremely pedantic, you are right. Juries cannot simply stand up and say "this law is unconstitutional" and have it be so.
This is not pedantic. This is a fundamental principle of our legal system and you would do well to understand it. The practice of jury nullification is enshrined in no legal document. It has no legal weight in and of itself. That juries can use their position of power to push for social change is not a new concept. But there's nothing particularly special about juries refusing to convict as the legal system is concerned. They are free to decide whatever they like for whatever reason they like. That is why we have juries. But their influence is limited to one specific application of the law, rather than the nature of the law itself. That is a power reserved specifically for judges. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. It is one of the key principles on which our legal system is based.
You said, and I quote: "It should NEVER be up to the jury to make determinations of what the law is." The word "should" implies subjectivity and I responded in kind that I believe the opposite to be true, that the jury should make determinations about the law.
Fine, we're going to play the semantics game. I meant to say that in practice, the job of deciding questions of law is not expected to be delegated to the jury. Not whether the jury ought to be doing it or not.
And you don't know what you're talking about with regards to appeals. Findings of law, as decided by the judge, can be appealed. Findings of fact, as determined by the jury (or the judge in a bench trial) cannot, except in very unusual circumstances.
The judge can't say "you're wrong" and send the jury back until the come up with the right answer.
Actually, a directed verdict is the process of doing just that. The only reason a judge cannot enter a guilty plea after a finding of not guilty is because it violates double jeopardy. Doing it the other way is fine, though.
The main point is that the jury is entrusted to find the facts in the case. That they can disagree with the law and use that as an excuse to find the facts to be other than what they actually are is merely a quirk of the legal system, no matter how important some might find that quirk to be. The jury never decides matters of law. Claiming that they do through jury nullification shows a lack of understanding about the legal system. That is why it is not relevant to this discussion. While it may seem like the jury is deciding matters of law, they are, as far as the legal process is concerned, still only finders of fact. They are free to find the facts any way they please, within reason. But jury nullification does not invalidate the law. A ruling from a court does. That is the big difference.
Thats because you subscribe to the idea that intentional misinterpretation and misunderstanding rises to the level of legitimate public debate.
It's ALL open to interpretation. That's my point. And you just proved it with your long rambling diatribe about what the Second Amendment means. If there were really no debate, it would be unnecessary for you to argue so vehemently for one interpretation over another. I only picked the Second Amendment because the debate over the meaning is so well known. It does exist, regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about the merits of such debate.
Let me ask you something. Does the right to keep and bear arms cover, say, bazookas? High explosives? Nuclear weapons? Biological weapons? Again, I don't really care what you think the answer is as much as the fact that you acknowledge that there is some reasonable question over what exactly it covers. And this is my point. No matter how crystal clear you attempt to make some law, and how much you plan for it to cover every possible case, somebody will find an exception. And it is the job of the courts to deal with those exceptions, regardless of whether they are truly "legitimate" or not.
Simply put, you're wrong.
I am aware of the concept of jury nullification, and I am not addressing that here because it is a controversial issue and one that is worthy of a discussion in its own right. It also has no bearing on this discussion. Even when the jury refuses to convict based on an unjust law, they are not finding issue with the law itself, but only its application given the current set of facts. They are effectively finding that, while the facts may fit the strict definition of the law, there are mitigating circumstances that do not allow them to find the defendant guilty for whatever reason. The jury does not, and cannot, rule on points of law. They are only allowed to rule on facts. That is why decisions of a jury, unlike decisions of a judge, are generally not allowed to be appealed. They are also not legally binding on any other case, unlike the decisions of a judge.
Never in my life have I seen somebody so spectacularly fail to get the point.
Many people disagree with your interpretation. It is a well known point of contention in the U.S. Constitution. I could have just as easily used the Interstate Commerce Clause, but I chose the Second Amendment because the public debate is more widely recognized. The merits of such a debate are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.
Thank you nonetheless for that fascinating essay.
Translation: the High Priest In Charge pulls out of his exalted ass arbitrary "interpretations" to his liking (which the poor sheep in the jury box are "unqualified" to judge - for "their own good") and instructs the dumbfounded sheeple to do as he exactly as he tells them, thus restricting any and all options they ever thought they had.
Ah, now we come to the crux of your argument. You are smarter than all of the rest of us "sheeple", so you should be put in charge of deciding what is and isn't a good law. And your nonsensical metaphors and fanciful characterizations, while colorful, fail to convey anything more than your own intellectual snobbishness.
The jury instructions you cited, while somewhat lengthy, do not seem overly complicated--particularly when you are familiar with the facts of the case and can also ask the judge for clarification of any parts you do not understand. They certainly do not seem impenetrable by a person of average intelligence. It is somewhat ironic, given your perception of yourself as much smarter than the "sheeple" who are the intended recipients of those instructions, that you find them daunting. The fact that you can't comprehend simple concepts when more than a couple of them are strung together does not render the entire system defective.
Which commandments Christianity solidified (and which then Islam made harsher) and which are indirectly responsible for Christians outnumbering Jews by a factor of a 1000 to 1 or so (Islam having an even higher ratio). You should ponder this relationship.
Even granting your dubious premise that Christianity created simpler rather than less complex laws, this is an unsupported argument post hoc, ergo propter hoc and does not merit further response.
Simply to remove the possibility of conflict of interest. It is the desire of investigators to discover crime and that makes some of them to lose objectivity. That is why courts (or some similar mechanism) are still a good idea, irrespective of how clear the law gets. If the law said that you cannot have more than 2 apples on your person, no exceptions, and you were accused of having 3, the accuser (or an arresting officer or some other functionary) would have to prove to your peers (i.e. a jury) that you indeed had them 3 apples. Otherwise a mere accusation, backed up by a friendly co-worker would be enough. Note that this does not change at all if you were to be accused of having 3 apples in a 2-apple country or of committing mass murder with weapons of mass destruction.
And how do you define having apples? Do you have to physically hold the apples? Do they just have to be within your physical control? How do you define that? Is it enough if they are in your house, whether you're there or not? What about if you're only renting and your landlord put them in a locked closet without your knowledge? Does it matter if you have a mortgage or not? What happens if you have two apples, and somebody throws a third apple at you? Or you don't know that you have three apples, because somebody sneaked one into your pocket while you weren't looking? Maybe you're blind and somebody told you that what you were picking up was an orange. You can come up with an infinite number of variations on these circumstances, each of which must be tested on a case by case basis to arrive at a fair result. Nobody will be able to predict in advance how a court should rule in every conceivable circumstance.
If it does, it was a wrong law to have to begin with. Otherwise it just becomes better, not more complex. Example: "You may have no more then 2 apples on your person at any time" can be confused by someone coming up with an apple-orange hybrid, or introducing sliced apples etc. Depending upon the intent of the law, in can be re-formulated as "You may have no more then 2 plant-matter objects on your person" or "you may have no more than 100g of plant matter on your person" etc. Not that the law does not get more complex, nor longer. It just becomes different, and either more or less clear and easier or harder to test against.
Never mind the fact that your solution calls for vastly expanding the law beyond its original intent simply for the purpose of clarity, which is a frightening enough proposition if you truly are in favor of that. No matter how specific or general you make the law, there is no law that has no exceptions. And if there are exceptions, you cannot know in advance what those exceptions will be.
Not it is not logically inconsistent. This same problem exists in science, where the incomplete, wrong and ill-thought out systems are usually more complex then the accurate ones covering all cases. Example: before Copernicus the leading explanation for movement of celestial objects was a convoluted circles-within-circles scheme which attempted (poorly) to account for all observable evidence. The present model of Solar system, which covers all evidence (which previously was a long list of "exceptions" and "what if" scenarios) in one swoop, with a much more elegant and conceptually simple.
This just proves my point. Do you not see the difference between scientific principles and the laws of society? Let me spell it out for you
Err, no. Juries must decide if a law was broken or not. To do so they must not only find facts, but also compare them to the template of the law, which is where the process falls apart as the laws are so fucked up that juries have next to an impossible task of figuring out if the "law" was broken or not.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! You couldn't be more wrong about this, and it shows you have a fundamental lack of understanding about how the legal system works. Your aversion to it is not surprising, as people have a tendency to deride things they cannot or will not understand.
The process works like this. The two sides present the case in front of the jury. The judge and jury hear the case. The JUDGE makes determinations of law, and for the purposes of the case, that is the law as far as the jury is concerned. When the parties are finished, the judge explains to the jury the possible verdicts they can come back with in simple, straightforward terms much like you are proposing. This is why jury instructions are so critical, and why quite a few appeals turn on whether juries are given proper instructions or not.
A typical instruction will be go basically like this: "If you find that the defendant killed the victim with his car intentionally and with malice, then you must return a verdict of guilty of homicide. If you find that the defendant killed the victim with his car because he was not paying adequate attention to the road, you must return a verdict of guilty of manslaughter. And if you find that the defendant was paying sufficient attention and this was simply an unavoidable accident, you must return a verdict of not guilty." It should NEVER be up to the jury to make determinations of what the law is; only whether the set of facts conform to that law, as it is explained by the judge. If they have questions, they are obligated to ask the judge for clarification rather than attempting to make that determination on their own. In truth, it's about as close to your proposed system as one could hope for. If that is unsuitable to you, then you are contradicting yourself.
You should ponder upon why Judeo-Christian religions (of which Islam is an off-shoot) are so vastly popular. And if you do, you will find that it is an average person's deep-seated desire for a concise, clear set of rules to govern society that is at the very heart of it. Mock that desire it at your own peril.
I disagree. They are popular for the same reason all religion is popular--they give meaning to the meaningless. It has nothing to do with wanting a set of laws that cover every situation. In point of fact, Jewish tradition does not prescribe a set of laws that must be meticulously followed. Rather, there are a few such laws--the commandments--and a set of guidelines for moral behavior. Much of Jewish Talmudic tradition, for example, focuses on interpreting, challenging, and clarifying laws set out in the Torah. And even the experts in the Talmud will be the first to admit that it is impossible for them to conceive of every possible situation in advance.
You always need an arbitration process to prevent abuse.
Why? What is the job of the courts, if not to interpret the law? Under your proposal, there would be no need for judges, because laws would be clear and concise in every set of circumstances. The possibility of one particular enforcement agent misapplying (not "abusing", because under what you propose no such abuse would be possible) the law could be resolved by a simple appeals process whereby the direct supervisor of, say, the police officer makes a determination whether the law was appropriately enforced. Under your system, that would be all that the courts do anyway, because it would not be up to them to determine if the law is fair or not--only whether it applies in this circumstance. Anybody could do that, right?
And that is different from, say, the US constitution, how exactly?
Tell me the precise settled meaning of the Second Amendment, for example, and you will have answered your own question. The Constitution is a guideline establishing how the government should be run and what rights and responsibilities are held by the federal government, the states, and the people. It is not a precise code of laws that is not open to interpretation.
Bullshit. Well designed laws, even though they can be changed, require less and less modifications as more refined they become. Bullshit, byzantine, intellectual diarrhoea "laws" are in a state of constant chaotic flux and become more and more confused and voluminous as the time passes, because confusion and chaos are their very purpose.
Your argument falls apart when you realize that, no matter how carefully crafted and precise you think your laws are, somebody will always find an exception, a "but what if", a border case, or some other situation that is not directly covered by the law. In order to cover this particular case, the law would need to be modified to add an exception, or you risk the ambiguity of not knowing how that same situation should be resolved the next time it comes up. The law therefore becomes more and more complex with time. You simply can't make a law cover more situations adequately by making it simpler, because the simpler you make the law the more likely you are to find exceptions to it.
Again, bullshit. Religions do that because they have no mechanism to correct their "commandments". Human laws do. But that does not mean that a correction must always be uniformly in the direction of more complexity. In fact the whole art of law-making is to go in the precisely the opposite direction, to formulate simple laws in such a way as to cover all cases.
Again, this is logically inconsistent. Simpler means more general, and it's the specifics that are always the thorny issue in a legal system.
This has nothing to do with "subtlety" and "nuance". It has to do with byzantine, arcane, sets of incomprehensible to an
Most of juries have no clue if the decisions they have reached are actually just and remain conflicted long after the trial. That alone tells you about the quality of "justice" that is being served.
Juries are finders of fact, not of law. If what you say is true--and I don't think you have any basis whatsoever for claiming this about "most" juries--then it actually cuts against you. When the facts themselves are so ambiguous as to leave juries conflicted about whether they have actually correctly decided what those facts are, how do you expect to create laws that apply fairly to facts that can't be determined to any degree of certainty?
I agree. We should eliminate the need for lawyers by moving to a religious law system like they have in Middle Eastern countries. It's pretty straightforward. There's one text that we all follow--not too much for the average person to memorize. Laws are interpreted by those doing the enforcing, so in most cases we wouldn't even need a court system. Disputes are settled by consulting the book, and the authority of said book is final. And we wouldn't ever want to update the book, because that would lead to the kind of instability and uncertainty you're objecting to. If your case doesn't fall under one of the predefined situations, we just find the closest one and go with that.
This is the only way to create a uniform system that is applied fairly in all situations. This has worked particularly well where it has been applied--witness the logical and fair conclusions that are regularly reached by the enforcement of zero-tolerance policies in schools, for example. You're absolutely correct that the problem is not that individuals may find themselves in differing situations and thus need the law applied differently to reach a reasonable result, but that judges and lawyers have too long been allowed to permit such vague concepts as subtlety and nuance to cloud the issue.
I mean, let's look at the numbers here. With only seven billion people in the world, there can't possibly be more than a few hundred different kinds of disputes that ever come up. A thousand, tops. So why would we ever need more laws than that? And why would we ever need to interpret those laws on a case by case basis? I wouldn't call our current society "lawless"--I'd call it out and out anarchy.
Again, you admit that the two statements are "connected" by "attitude" at best. You've gone from making a specific statement of fact (people think that censoring child porn and censoring political speech are the same thing) to a vague general statement of opinion (people are unreasonably afraid of the threat of authoritarianism). I think you understand the difference between these two, and why shifting your premise from the former to the latter is dishonest, particularly when you claim you're not doing so.
The fact is you couldn't prove your former statement, because it's not true. So you're making the latter claim, which can't really be proven as it's a matter of opinion. So not only are you begging that question, you're trying to substitute your opinion for fact.
There are really only two options here. Either find two quotes that explicitly say what you said in the first place, i.e.:
you see people all the time, especially on slashdot, actually saying "country A censors child porn so how can it criticize another country for censoring political opinion?"
Or admit that you are a liar and that statement is untrue. I'm not interested in your opinion on what the "attitude" of a statement is, or how you twist and interpret people's words to mean what you want them to mean. You made the claim that people say that. So you back it up with proof. Not opinions. Not wild interpretations. Facts are what we deal in here.
I await your next pathetic attempt to weasel your way out of admitting you lied.
Once again, you fail to get the point that you can't simply shift the goalposts once you've started losing. I have no interest in debating the "merits" of your silly strawman argument and I never did. It is obvious that you cannot defend your lies and misrepresentations. You have no ground left to stand on But please do continue with the gratuitous name calling. You're only continuing to embarrass yourself.
Never mind the fact that the quote says nothing about child porn OR authoritarian states. (Do you really disagree with the notion that having a system in place to censor one kind of speech makes it easier for a government to censor another kind? Because that's all that quote says to those of us capable of reading things objectively). Your premise has changed. You started out saying:
you see people all the time, especially on slashdot, actually saying "country A censors child porn so how can it criticize another country for censoring political opinion?
You're now saying:
a lot of retards here think we are a heartbeat away from outright authoritarian statehood, because we censor child porn
I guess if you can't prove what you set out to prove, change what it is you set out to prove (not that you have been able to adequately demonstrate either one). Not only that, but you still haven't found a SINGLE quote that even mentions the censorship of child porn. I'm afraid there is only one dishonest person here, intellectually or otherwise. You.
You also failed to answer the question I posed. You cannot state that the quote says that liberal countries' censorship of child porn and authoritarian countries' censorship of political speech are the same, or even that they are functionally or morally equivalent. Or even that one necessarily leads to the other. But if we go by your original premise, that is what you would need to show. That people believe that censoring child porn is morally no better than censoring political speech, and therefore countries that do the former can't criticize those that do the latter. I can only presume that you cede the point, and thus, your entire argument.
If I were to challenge you to find two anti-Microsoft comments you could easily do it. And no, they wouldn't have to mimic your exact words (and you don't apparently know the meaning of the word "pedantically"). But they would have to be clearly anti-Microsoft. Comments about IBM wouldn't be acceptable, nor would comments contrasting specific problems with Microsoft software against open source. They would have to be clearly anti-Microsoft to the average reader. You, on the other hand, apparently cannot find two comments that say what you want them to say. Never mind finding 90% of the posts on Slashdot--you can't find a damn one.
You have given us nothing but rhetoric. Even the threads you cited plainly don't say what you want them to say. You have a lot of nerve talking about intellectual honesty when you have been called out on your lies multiple times and still cling to them.
I have explained to you time and time again why even the examples you have given say exactly the opposite of what you are claiming. You have ignored this. You have done nothing but regurgitate the same lies over and over again.
But here we go. As Zappa said, one more time for the world!
Heck, the Australian and German governments filter their entire countries, for ostentatious "think of the children" reasons, but all it takes is a flip of a switch for it to go political. Neither country historically has much of a problem with certain kinds of political censorship.
This is a quote you provided as an example. And yet, it says EXACTLY the opposite of what you're pretending it does. Specifically, the poster differentiates between "protecting the children" censorship and "political" censorship. The switch metaphor couldn't be any clearer. What they are saying is that one may lead to the other, and you can't deny the possibility of that. You can argue about the likelihood of it happening, or whether it is worth censoring immoral material at the cost of potentially stifling freedom of speech. One thing you cannot do--at least, not without rightfully being called a liar--is what you have done; that is, you cannot say that the poster is saying they are the same thing, or even that they are functionally equivalent.
Respond to that. Explain how the poster says that censoring child porn and political speech are the same thing. Not that one leads to the other. Not that both are wrong. HOW THE POSTER SAYS THEY ARE THE SAME THING. This is the crux of your argument, after all. You provided the quote, so now you defend your position on that quote.
If you respond in any other way, it is tantamount to an admission of dishonesty because you cannot support the position you so vehemently advanced without changing the parameters. So go on, let's see you try. It'll be fun. But in all honesty, you'd have an easier time tying to prove the existence of unicorns.
It doesn't happen.
Find QUOTES. Or it doesn't happen. Not links to pages that kind of maybe say something tangentially related to what you're talking about. Not assertions that it's somehow my job to prove a negative. I pose to you the same challenge as the original responder to your comment.
Quote me two posts on Slashdot, with links TO THE ACTUAL POST, that say that censorship of anything at all is the same as censoring political speech. And only posts that say that. Not posts talking about government restrictions in general. Not posts expressing concern that governments in the west may be trying to suppress political speech.
Let's put this another way. Your hypothesis is as follows: "On Slashdot, there are many people who say that censorship of any sort of speech is the same as censoring only political speech." Now support your hypothesis with specific examples.
But I wouldn't bother wasting the effort if I were you. Practically nobody believes that shouting "fire" in a crowded theater shouldn't be prevented or punished. Just as very few believe that producing child porn shouldn't be punished. Or that libel laws shouldn't be enforced. That's certainly not the prevailing opinion on Slashdot. Therefore, your argument really has no basis in reality.
that it is a common moronic refrain on slashdot that censoring something as obviously vile as child porn in the west is the same as what china and iran do to political dissidents
Nobody has ever made this claim except you.
i have proven my point, and can find lots more proof. its rock solid
If you have, then so have I.
the links i provided actually adhere to my claim. yours do not- which is precisely your point, that they don't adhere to what you are claiming. you are saying i am doing the same thing: my links don't support my claim
I am honestly impressed that the Socratic Method is not completely lost on you. I am also impressed with your inability to understand the point.
but you're wrong. would like to analyze a link of mine? show it does not support my claim?
This has already been done. Twice.
There is nothing else anybody can say to respond to your nonsense except to reiterate that what you're quoting doesn't say what you're claiming it does. None of the links you reference make any mention of child porn. Practically none of them even mention censorship, and those that do are only talking about political censorship.
It is not good enough to simply point at some quotations and say "See? These say what I want them to say!" THEY... DO... NOT. Any more than the links I provided say anything relevant to my point. You seem to be capable of recognizing this when other people apply it to yourself.
If you really believe what you are saying, then you are doing a really miserable job explaining it. Hardly surprising, given your piss-poor communication skills. But nonetheless, simply willing things to be the case over and over again doesn't prove your point. Even when you directly quote the material and respond to it, the best you can come up with is a bunch of non sequiturs, most of which don't even go to your point in the first place. Unless you somehow equate people being concerned with having their rights taken away with defending kiddie porn?
Try actually choosing a direct quote from the ones listed above and explaining in a rational manner how it states that blocking child porn and government censorship of political speech are the same thing. Clearly nobody has been able to follow your line of reasoning so far, so it behooves you to clarify it rather than asking us to prove a negative--something you should know is impossible, particularly when you haven't articulated a lucid position in the first place.
But I don't really expect you to do that. So I would love to hear whatever asinine response you have prepared to embarrass yourself with yet again. I could do this all day!
That's not a refutation. You still lose. Sorry you're too stupid to actually provide a logical answer. My point was perfectly reasonable, and I backed it up with valid evidence. Your making jokes just shows that you can't really refute what I was saying. Again, I challenge you to follow these extremely simple directions: Either demonstrate that what I was saying doesn't prove my point, or you admit defeat.