"...liberalism rejects the criminalization of belief." -- from the esaay, "Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb" by David Luban as adapted in the current issue of Harper's. Clearly, that was written by someone who knows what liberalism is. You seem to be misinformed on the subject.
Maybe you meant something other than my interpretation, but if so then you really need to take it up with Baseball_Fan, who "agreed" with you that "this is the work of liberals".
Well, no, you didn't say it was done by liberals. But look what you implied. You wrote:
Wow, I never knew Canada was so totalitarian when it came to freedom of speech. Guess if you don't tow the liberal line your wallet suffers the consequences...
Aren't you calling this act of censorship a totalitarian means to liberal ends? But free speech is a liberal end (as well as a liberal means to a more enlightened society). There's a contradiction in your statement, and as a liberal I feel compelled to point it out.
Liberalism is as much about means as it is about ends. Liberals don't accept non-liberal means to liberal ends. Anyone practicing or advocating censorship is, by definition, not liberal, no matter how they choose to label themselves.
That's why those who, for whatever reason, think liberalism is a bad thing, will always try to denounce the ACLU as a liberal organization (it is, but calling it one is not an insult!), even as it defends the free speech rights of groups like the KKK.
Maybe you are trolling, or maybe my sarcasm detector needs calibration today. But seriously, since when is government suppression of free speech a liberal goal?
Canada is moving rightward politically. Really kind of sad.
In other words, the continent rises, and so does the continental shelf surrounding it (after all, the shelf is just a submerged part of the continent). So the extra water has to slough off the shelf, and the oceans get deeper. Good observation.
What an incredible Cinderella story, this unknown comes outta no where to lead the pack, at Augusta. He's on his final hole, he's about 455 yards away -- he's gonna hit about a 2-iron, I think. Oh he got all of that one!... This crowd has gone deathly silent, the Cinderella story, outta nowhere, a former greenskeeper now -- about to become The Masters champion. It looks like a mirac -- It's in the hole!
Re:orbital mechanics-- BONK! ??
on
Golf in Space
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· Score: 1
It will go into a different (but intersecting, as you noted) orbit. Assume the station is in a perfectly circular orbit, and that the ball is hit in the direction of orbital travel. After a while, the ball, having higher velocity than the station, will reach apogee (on the opposite side of the earth) which will be higher than the station's orbit. Then the ball will descend to its perigee, which is the same point at which it was struck. But the ball's orbit has a longer semimajor axis than the station's orbit, so it will take longer to make a complete orbit, and will be slightly behind the station when it returns. It could hit the station if this shift in position is less than the length of the station.
If the ball is hit in the opposite direction from the station's travel, it will instead descend to a perigee and rise back up to meet the station's orbit, but will be ahead of the station.
Now try to think about what will happen if the ball is hit directly towards the earth, or away from the earth.
Are you saying he was wrong to publish his findings? In the U.S., we do have freedom of the press -- at least it says so on paper. So why are his actions not protected because he chose to excercise a Constitutionally protected freedom? The original comment implied those same actions would have been protected if (and only if) he had gone straight to some government agency.
If it's linearly stretched it's ugly all right, but Mitsubishi's Stretch Plus mode works pretty well. First, it provides some vertical stretch as well as the horizontal stretch, so the aspect ratio doesn't change as drastically. Most of the horizontal stretching is done near the edges, with the result that there is verly little distortion at the center, where your focus is the majority of the time. The edge distortion is easily filtered out by your brain, except when there is significant movement at the edge, which usually doesn't last long enough to get annoying.
If you switch from a standard screen to a wide screen that is around 10% to 15% larger diagonally, the standard-definition image actually decreases in size, so this mode compensates nicely. Of course, if you are comparing a standard screen to a wide screen of equal or greater height, this advantage is lost. I use Stretch Plus for standard definition material because it gives me an image size I'm used to, not because the image "should fill the screen."
But aside from the visual aspect, this mode offers one very real advantage: If you are watching a news channel, the vertical expansion is just enough to cut off the annoying banner at the bottom of the screen. Good riddance!
Your Crichton quote, Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had, is using consensus differently from the original poster that said Science is based on consensus of opinion. Both are wrong in different ways.
OP was wrong because science is not based on consensus. Science is based on method. Good methodologies produce good science, and bad methodologies produce bad science.
Crichton was wrong because there is no great evil thing that can be labeled "consensus of scientists". There rarely is a true consensus in science, unless it's on such obvious things as whether the Moon is made of green cheese. Crichton's phrase would not be found in scientific journals, because it is an invention of the popular press (i.e., people like Crichton). Furthermore, when he writes, it is a way to avoid debate, he seems to be advocating that scientific theories should be established by winning debates, rather than by following scientific method. I couldn't agree less.
But even at light speed th closest galaxies are still years away, so we really can't 'go anywhere'
Actually it turns out that by accelerating at a constant rate of 1 g, you could (in principle) cross the known universe in an average human lifetime (as measured in the traveler's frame of reference). This is the result of the relativistic dilation of time. Of course there are practical problems with this, not the least of which is the fact that if you ever return to earth after such a trip, billions of years will have passed here. And it takes a lot of energy to maintain that acceleration for such an extended time.
But if you could overcome the other difficulties of near-light-speed travel (and of interstellar travel in general), then less ambitious trips, such as to stars in our own galaxy, would become possible if we can in fact build a ship with these capabilities. Those other difficulties are significant so maybe we still can't go anywhere, but your comment falls short of explaining why not.
Hate crimes are not thought crimes. Thought crimes (as the term was originated by Orwell) make certain beliefs illegal even if no action is taken based on those beliefs. Of course, the term is used more loosely than that today, but speaking for myself, I reserve it for those cases that, if prosecuted, would clearly intrude on an enumerated right related to freedom of expression. I don't find a broader definition than that to be useful, and hate crimes don't meet my definition.
It is true that state of mind is involved in the definition of a hate crime. But, in principle, this is not different from determining whether a murder was premeditated; whether a person accused of manslaughter believed his life was endangered and thus acting in self-defense; whether the accused is not guilty by reason of insanity; or whether there are mitigating circumstances that would lessen the penalty for a crime. Whether these mental states really should affect the sentencing is a valid subject for debate, but nobody considers premeditated murder a "thought crime" even if it carries a higher penalty than an equally violent "crime of passion".
For somebody to be convicted of a hate crime, the hatred element must meet the same standard of evidence as the action itself; a jury must find, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the act in question was motivated by hatred of a specific (ethnic|religious|gendered|sexually oriented) group of people. For that reason, you will not see prosecutions for hate crimes if the element of hate cannot be clearly shown. (If you do, you can put it down to overzealous prosecution, but that is an issue unto itself.)
Last of all, hate crime laws probably do carry some justifiction in most cases. When a crime is racially motivated, for example, people of the same race as the immediate victim are victimized by being subjected to fear. Thus, we recognize a qualitative difference between mass murder and terrorism. Thus again, the Klan certainly has a right to their beliefs, a right to hold meetings, and a right to express their beliefs through speech or the press; but violent or threatening actions based on those beliefs, so as to assert their "supremacy" over non-whites, are not protected, and so may carry higher statutory penalties than other violent or threatening actions.
then the legal issues can't possible be as settled as the OP said.
He never said the legal issues were "settled". What he wrote was this:
The matter is controversial, and there's no denying it's being hotly debated. The issues of law, however, are not so tenuous as you seem to think. Every argument that the White House has offered has been quite thoroughly refuted.
He's saying one side's arguments have been discredited, but since there can be many sides to a legal issue, that's not tantamount to saying the issue is "settled".
In fact the arguments from the White House depend on a theory of consolidation of powers (my phrase, not theirs) in a strong executive branch. I'd say we pretty thoroughly refuted such theories when we fought a war with the British over just this sort of thing back in 1776. Sure, the Supreme Court could rule otherwise and resurrect that theory, but in doing so they would be abandoning the principles on which the union was founded.
I don't know if there are any general rules followed by anyone. Usually a presedent that just left office is in the news a lot and is refered to as "former President soandso" at first but over time the "former" tag will erode away some if they stay in the news a lot like Clinton. Ford isn't in the news much so he is usually given the former tag when he is refered to. An exception to this would obviously be Bush Sr. since this can cause some confusion with the current Presedent.
In my observation, the "former" seems to show up a lot in radio and TV, but is used far less frequently in print media. It doesn't seem to correlate with passage of time or prominence in the news, to my awareness. Of course I never thought much about it.
Commenting on the original complaint of this subthread, I think the "Mr." is fairly traditional; didn't newspapers in the 1860s refer to "Mr. Lincoln"?
So if a user keeps his browser cache on a DVD-RAM, that also qualifies as manufacturing? It's rulings like this that muddy the waters. Surely the law is not such a fuzzy thing?
I'd like to point out that the Constitution expressly gives Congress the authority to establish courts lower than the Supreme Court. It also expressly denies the government permission to perform searches and seizures (interpreted by our courts to include wiretapping) without a warrant.
The Constitution does not establish who has the authority to issue warrants, but that has traditionally been vested in the courts. I don't think you'll see that presumption overturned any time soon; doing so would invalidate every federal search warrant ever issued.
A little common sense tells us that Congress cannot effectively establish a court without defining that court's purpose and jurisdiction. Since one legitimate purpose of a court is to issue warrants, FISA is an appropriate exercise of Congressional power. FISA does not restrict executive powers; in fact, it is an enabler of an executive power. In order for the executive to exercise its power of "search and seizure" while meeting the Constitutional requirement of obtaining a warrant, a court must exist (be established by Congress) with the authority to issue the warrant.
Q.E.D.
The power in question is the war-making power, which the constitution grants to the executive branch.
Although "war-making power" is not relevant to this case, you won't find these powers vested in the executive branch:
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
etc. You are probably thinking instead of this clause:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States
A narrow plurality, 49% to 45%, said they supported Bush's decision to allow the National Security Agency to intercept, without a warrant, international communications suspected of links to Al Qaeda.
Hard to believe. But then there was this:
A large share, 46%, said they would not mind if the government monitored their calls "as part of the fight against terrorism"; 53% said they would object.
So about 8% do care about their own rights but don't mind as long as it's somebody else's rights being violated.
If you believe that removing vague, "equal time" legislation and allowing the market to deliver what the marketplace wants is destroying the debate in society, then you are deluded.
Slashdot Mirror
"...liberalism rejects the criminalization of belief." -- from the esaay, "Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb" by David Luban as adapted in the current issue of Harper's. Clearly, that was written by someone who knows what liberalism is. You seem to be misinformed on the subject.
Maybe you meant something other than my interpretation, but if so then you really need to take it up with Baseball_Fan, who "agreed" with you that "this is the work of liberals".
Yes, right-wingers are so protective of our free speech they've even given us this.
Wow, I never knew Canada was so totalitarian when it came to freedom of speech. Guess if you don't tow the liberal line your wallet suffers the consequences...
Aren't you calling this act of censorship a totalitarian means to liberal ends? But free speech is a liberal end (as well as a liberal means to a more enlightened society). There's a contradiction in your statement, and as a liberal I feel compelled to point it out.
Liberalism is as much about means as it is about ends. Liberals don't accept non-liberal means to liberal ends. Anyone practicing or advocating censorship is, by definition, not liberal, no matter how they choose to label themselves.
That's why those who, for whatever reason, think liberalism is a bad thing, will always try to denounce the ACLU as a liberal organization (it is, but calling it one is not an insult!), even as it defends the free speech rights of groups like the KKK.
Canada is moving rightward politically. Really kind of sad.
In other words, the continent rises, and so does the continental shelf surrounding it (after all, the shelf is just a submerged part of the continent). So the extra water has to slough off the shelf, and the oceans get deeper. Good observation.
Aren't they both really North Antarctica?
Where is it written (in law) that a corporation has the rights of a person?
What an incredible Cinderella story, this unknown comes outta no where to lead the pack, at Augusta. He's on his final hole, he's about 455 yards away -- he's gonna hit about a 2-iron, I think. Oh he got all of that one! ... This crowd has gone deathly silent, the Cinderella story, outta nowhere, a former greenskeeper now -- about to become The Masters champion. It looks like a mirac -- It's in the hole!
If the ball is hit in the opposite direction from the station's travel, it will instead descend to a perigee and rise back up to meet the station's orbit, but will be ahead of the station.
Now try to think about what will happen if the ball is hit directly towards the earth, or away from the earth.
Are you saying he was wrong to publish his findings? In the U.S., we do have freedom of the press -- at least it says so on paper. So why are his actions not protected because he chose to excercise a Constitutionally protected freedom? The original comment implied those same actions would have been protected if (and only if) he had gone straight to some government agency.
If you switch from a standard screen to a wide screen that is around 10% to 15% larger diagonally, the standard-definition image actually decreases in size, so this mode compensates nicely. Of course, if you are comparing a standard screen to a wide screen of equal or greater height, this advantage is lost. I use Stretch Plus for standard definition material because it gives me an image size I'm used to, not because the image "should fill the screen."
But aside from the visual aspect, this mode offers one very real advantage: If you are watching a news channel, the vertical expansion is just enough to cut off the annoying banner at the bottom of the screen. Good riddance!
Based on this statement from the article, I'm guessing they did know:
SpatiaLight was unable to deliver a prototype in time for the Shoot-Out, and Sony declined to participate.
OP was wrong because science is not based on consensus. Science is based on method. Good methodologies produce good science, and bad methodologies produce bad science.
Crichton was wrong because there is no great evil thing that can be labeled "consensus of scientists". There rarely is a true consensus in science, unless it's on such obvious things as whether the Moon is made of green cheese. Crichton's phrase would not be found in scientific journals, because it is an invention of the popular press (i.e., people like Crichton). Furthermore, when he writes, it is a way to avoid debate, he seems to be advocating that scientific theories should be established by winning debates, rather than by following scientific method. I couldn't agree less.
Actually it turns out that by accelerating at a constant rate of 1 g, you could (in principle) cross the known universe in an average human lifetime (as measured in the traveler's frame of reference). This is the result of the relativistic dilation of time. Of course there are practical problems with this, not the least of which is the fact that if you ever return to earth after such a trip, billions of years will have passed here. And it takes a lot of energy to maintain that acceleration for such an extended time.
But if you could overcome the other difficulties of near-light-speed travel (and of interstellar travel in general), then less ambitious trips, such as to stars in our own galaxy, would become possible if we can in fact build a ship with these capabilities. Those other difficulties are significant so maybe we still can't go anywhere, but your comment falls short of explaining why not.
The Relativistic Rocket
It is true that state of mind is involved in the definition of a hate crime. But, in principle, this is not different from determining whether a murder was premeditated; whether a person accused of manslaughter believed his life was endangered and thus acting in self-defense; whether the accused is not guilty by reason of insanity; or whether there are mitigating circumstances that would lessen the penalty for a crime. Whether these mental states really should affect the sentencing is a valid subject for debate, but nobody considers premeditated murder a "thought crime" even if it carries a higher penalty than an equally violent "crime of passion".
For somebody to be convicted of a hate crime, the hatred element must meet the same standard of evidence as the action itself; a jury must find, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the act in question was motivated by hatred of a specific (ethnic|religious|gendered|sexually oriented) group of people. For that reason, you will not see prosecutions for hate crimes if the element of hate cannot be clearly shown. (If you do, you can put it down to overzealous prosecution, but that is an issue unto itself.)
Last of all, hate crime laws probably do carry some justifiction in most cases. When a crime is racially motivated, for example, people of the same race as the immediate victim are victimized by being subjected to fear. Thus, we recognize a qualitative difference between mass murder and terrorism. Thus again, the Klan certainly has a right to their beliefs, a right to hold meetings, and a right to express their beliefs through speech or the press; but violent or threatening actions based on those beliefs, so as to assert their "supremacy" over non-whites, are not protected, and so may carry higher statutory penalties than other violent or threatening actions.
Franklin would have watched his mouth and not made such treasonous statements it he had known that Washington was tapping his phone.
He never said the legal issues were "settled". What he wrote was this:
The matter is controversial, and there's no denying it's being hotly debated. The issues of law, however, are not so tenuous as you seem to think. Every argument that the White House has offered has been quite thoroughly refuted.
He's saying one side's arguments have been discredited, but since there can be many sides to a legal issue, that's not tantamount to saying the issue is "settled".
In fact the arguments from the White House depend on a theory of consolidation of powers (my phrase, not theirs) in a strong executive branch. I'd say we pretty thoroughly refuted such theories when we fought a war with the British over just this sort of thing back in 1776. Sure, the Supreme Court could rule otherwise and resurrect that theory, but in doing so they would be abandoning the principles on which the union was founded.
In my observation, the "former" seems to show up a lot in radio and TV, but is used far less frequently in print media. It doesn't seem to correlate with passage of time or prominence in the news, to my awareness. Of course I never thought much about it.
Commenting on the original complaint of this subthread, I think the "Mr." is fairly traditional; didn't newspapers in the 1860s refer to "Mr. Lincoln"?
So if a user keeps his browser cache on a DVD-RAM, that also qualifies as manufacturing? It's rulings like this that muddy the waters. Surely the law is not such a fuzzy thing?
The rights of the President are exactly the same as the rights of every other U.S. citizen.
The powers of the President are something entirely different. Until you can see the difference, you have no argument to make.
The Constitution does not establish who has the authority to issue warrants, but that has traditionally been vested in the courts. I don't think you'll see that presumption overturned any time soon; doing so would invalidate every federal search warrant ever issued.
A little common sense tells us that Congress cannot effectively establish a court without defining that court's purpose and jurisdiction. Since one legitimate purpose of a court is to issue warrants, FISA is an appropriate exercise of Congressional power. FISA does not restrict executive powers; in fact, it is an enabler of an executive power. In order for the executive to exercise its power of "search and seizure" while meeting the Constitutional requirement of obtaining a warrant, a court must exist (be established by Congress) with the authority to issue the warrant.
Q.E.D.
The power in question is the war-making power, which the constitution grants to the executive branch.
Although "war-making power" is not relevant to this case, you won't find these powers vested in the executive branch:
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
etc. You are probably thinking instead of this clause:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States
but that clause makes no mention of "war-making".
A narrow plurality, 49% to 45%, said they supported Bush's decision to allow the National Security Agency to intercept, without a warrant, international communications suspected of links to Al Qaeda.
Hard to believe. But then there was this:
A large share, 46%, said they would not mind if the government monitored their calls "as part of the fight against terrorism"; 53% said they would object.
So about 8% do care about their own rights but don't mind as long as it's somebody else's rights being violated.
Facts to back up this claim?