So the constitutional right to freedom of speech make the Disturbance of Peace laws invalid? No, I don't think so. This kid could have said whatever he wanted outside without depriving the people in the forum of their turns to speak. Fortunately, the constitution DOESN'T prohibit organized forums with rules.
C.2 If attempts to subdue the subject by other conventional tactics have been, or will likely be, ineffective in the situation at hand;
There you go. They had been trying to subdue him on the ground by conventional tactics for several minutes unsuccessfully. So the taser was justified. Case closed.
If there is one place that kids MUST NOT BE TAZED it is at political rallies in universities. The idea that a kid has to be educated by corporal and potentially lethal punishment as to where the neocon-sensitized line is in public discourse, is utterly repellent. You expect undergrads to be immature. They are growing their minds. Kids are shown video of how political disobedience and political rallies are often done by people who are getting frog walked away by cops. It is assumed rubber and metal bullets are the province of Myanmar or past South American regimes.
The rule of law should exist as much on campuses as anywhere else. He wasn't tasered as a means of education, he was tasered so they could get cuffs on him. The point of "civil disobedience" is to disobey unconscionable laws or rules, with the full expectation of paying the consequences. The rule that everyone gets a chance to speak is not unconscionable, and even if it were, if he's determined to disobey it, he should accept the consequence of being kicked out. If he refuses to be kicked out, he should accept the consequence of physical force. If he learns that there are inevitable consequences for actions, I guess his education won't have been for nothing.
Why is this country so great? It is because men and women before us stepped up to the podiums throughout history to cry out against government, and political individuals. This is why this country is great. But now it appears that to speak out is a crime by the very act of opening your mouth. This is just wrong.
Are you serious? People have made their own podiums, or have spoken at public podiums IN THEIR TURN. Do you actually imagine George Washington filibustering against the rules at the Continental Congress? In that case, NO ONE spoke twice until EVERYONE in the place had spoken once! This country was NOT made great by egomaniacs rushing podiums or trying to forcibly take the right to speak from others, as this young man did.
I suppose that's a question that will be reviewed: Under what circumstances can you use a taser. On a healthy person, it's pretty harmless. In this case, it did not look to me like they were able to get the cuffs on him until after they tasered him. Clearly, once they tasered him, they were able to get him out, whereas they couldn't before. So to me it seems justified. If you can only use the taser in a case of immediate danger, then it probably wouldn't qualify, but since they used it, chances are they don't have that rule.
No one is saying the kid wasn't disrupting the forum, what is in question is the fact that six officers felt threatened enough to justify electrocuting him. I'm just glad regular citizens, armed with cameras, were able to upload this incident as linked in an earlier submission.
Yes. You can see six officer struggling with him for several minutes trying to get cuffs on him. After they tasered him, they were finally able to do so, and escort him out. (At that point, all his energy was being put into saying "ow, ow, ow, ow, police brutality.") My only hope is that at trial the bailiff is armed with a taser as well, as it looks like he'll need it.
Well said. It blows my mind, these paranoids running around talking about the US government trying to silence the people, eliminate opposition, blah blah blah. It's a total disconnect with reality and obsession over an orwellian cold war mentality that is no longer relevant... at least it's not relevant in the US. The government couldn't give a crap about opposition. The protesters at the anti-war rally the other day got bummed out because the cops wouldn't arrest them for their "die in" so they had start climbing over capital building security fences to get arrested. In this country you can say whatever the hell you want, short of a credible threat of violence, and you can do whatever you want, short of messing with other people's lives. That's the reality. If it doesn't conform to your persecution fetish, I'm terribly sorry. Live with it, or move somewhere where you will be actually be persecuted, so you can bitch about it without being utterly insane.
WTF are you talking about? These are weapons of war and military intelligence, designed to be used in war zones; such as when they're searching house to house for insurgents, or clearing a building. The government is not keeping tables of "gait DNA" of the citizens. It's not a giant conspiracy to find and confiscate your pot. Other than a few crackpots like Hillary Clinton (with her "fairness doctrine"), no one in the government is campaigning to eliminate opposition.
Um, yes. These are military programs. Developed by DARPA, along with other technology that is most needed in Iraq and Afganistan, like instant automatic translators.
Oh, yes, I forgot, Al Gore has the new formulation of morality, all based upon his climatological alchemy. You would refrain from killing me because doing so would release carbon into the atmosphere. Of course you could do it anyway if you could afford the carbon offsets -- oops! back to economics again.
It's not the temprature itself that people are concerned about (go back 250MYA and CO2 concentrations were 4X what they are now and the planet was 10C warmer. It's the unprecedented rate of change that is "unatural" and a "clear and present danger".
The rate of temperature change is "unprecedented"? You can't be serious. The rate of change is nothing compared to the end of the ice age around 12kya. Nor is there any evidence that the rate of change is unusual compared to the relatively stable temperature since then. Nor is there a shred of evidence that the existing change is unnatural.
If you think discussing the possiblity of a global famine is hyperbowl then take a good look at what is happening to SE Australia (where I happen to live), if you prefer history then take a look at the "dustbowl" years in the US or the many cases where ancient civilizations crumbled due to rapidly changing environmental conditions.
The dustbowl and the current Australian drought are examples of cyclical local climate fluctuations. While it is a serious thing, it is neither global nor because of CO2.
Currently the Artic is predicted to be ice free in 40-50yrs so (according to predictions) the US still has a while before it "dries up", but this year's data (to quote TFA) was "extreme".
The arctic was melting during the dustbowl as well. It didn't last 40-50yrs, and this one won't either. Such predictions are wishful thinking on the part of apocalypse mongers. When we don't understand some process, it's natural to be afraid it will never stop. Like some stereotypical savage seeing an eclipse and thinking the sun isn't going to come back. However, I think that actual savages were more rational than us, as they observed that nature operates in cycles -- something that modern man is apparently oblivious to.
Thanks to this large but much maligned group of boffins there have been huge strides in our knowledge over the last three decades (including the sources for your "facts"). Yet when the consensus predictions of these "grant seeking leaches" start occuring in front of our very eyes at a much more alarming rate there are still those who will brush it all aside with some self-serving babble about our distant ancestors who had not even developed language let alone a global econmy and infrastructure that is TOTALLY dependent on the predictability of annual weather patterns (ie:climate). Arguing about the exact definition of an "open" as it pertains to the N.W. passage is the preverbial arranging of deck chairs.
I agree that understanding the climate is vital to the preservation of civilization. Most importantly, there is an Ice Age coming, and if we want to preserve our way of life, we have to find a way to stop it. I to admire the work of scientists over the last few decades, but when you talk about "consensus predictions" it makes me think that you haven't actually read the work.
There was a recent analysis of peer-reviewed climate research that finds that the work of over 500 scientists is undermining what is trying to be passed off by as "consensus" by snake oil salesmen. The ACTUAL scientific consensus includes the facts that "1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age; 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance; 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate."
Every time I see a company go overseas to do this kind of thing, it breaks my heart.
We should ensure that any company that does work overseas, does it to US or higher standards. The includes Nike paying US minimum wages and Exxon following US pollution guidelines.
So you'd have the U.S. government performing environmental inspections in foreign countries? I don't think these countries are going to take kindly to that. It would require military conflict in a lot of cases. The world doesn't belong to the US. Each country has its own independent responsibility to protect its people and its environment.
The idea of Nike paying US minimum wage in China... I'm speechless. It would just mean Nike would go out of business and a Chinese company would take its place, and we would import shoes from them.
When the rubber hits the road, religion ultimately has to retreat from explanations where science has achieved better/more supportable ones. It's painful, because our credulity for doctrine runs deep. But given time, it happens. It has long since happened for the weather (Zeus does not throw lightning bolts, electrostatic buildup in the clouds produces them) and for the structure of the universe (the Earth is not the center of things). For most of us, the age of the universe and the origin of species has left the religious purview as well, while a few holdouts entrench and struggle to cling to their sinking ship of explanation. Mostly, religion has now retreated to "matters of the spirit", but this will also eventually fall as understanding of the human brain, body, psychology, and mind become more complete.
Religion has never existed for the purpose of offering explanations for natural phenomenon. If you really think the Zeus mythology was invented to explain lightning, or that Isis, Osiris, or Horus were invented to explain the motion of the sun, then YOU are the victim of gullibility, and have a non-critical willingness to believe in the abject irrationality and absurdity of your forebearers of just a couple hundred generations before you. These matters have always pertained to spirit. Those who have seen nothing other than literal stories are those who never examine them, and don't care to think about such things more deeply. The idea that the understanding of psychology and the mind is "becoming more complete" is likewise gullible wishful thinking. There is just as much lack of critical thinking in science as in religion. Correct thinking should be applied to both, but it's rare to find it in any context.
The idea that religion is explained by people who never question what their parents have told them is silly. While I don't have statistics, most religious people I know, rejected the beliefs of their parents, either permanently, or to later find truth in it as adults.
My explanation for atheists is that they have never been exposed to anything but the most simplistic religious thought, and are too anxious to feel intellectually superior to religious people to seriously investigate anything that isn't condoned by the scientific hierarchy and their peers.
Maybe it a troll because there is no -1 "Ignorant enough to kill us all" moderation available?
Modding a post down simply because you disagree with it is a violation of the rules. CmdrTaco requests that such mods are reported to him so that he can ban such people from modding.
FYI: Al Gore is not a scientist. Please argue with respect to the studies performed in the field of Climatology and Atmospheric Science.
The problem has nothing to do with actual climatology. The problem is the crap that Al Gore says, and people believe, and advocate economic policy based upon.
Actually, there's a lot of evidence (ice core samples and such) that the arctic hasn't been warm enough for a passage to form for at least 100,000 years.
What specific ice core data suggests that the passage wasn't open in the Medieval Warm Period?
In theory, these feedback loops could get so severe they won't stop until the oceans boil. OK, that's pretty unlikely.....We can't know for sure -- and that should make us more scared, not less.
It's no mystery. It was a whole lot warmer in the last interglacial, 120kya, than any serious predictions for this one. The significantly warmer temps of the last interglacial are not in dispute. No "runaway global warming" ensued. Rather, an Ice Age ensued, just like after all the other interglacials.
I don't know how many people here are willing to hear it, but this is the biggest problem in general with OSS. It tends to be written by academics who may "computer science" experts, but are clueless as to what constitutes usability, as they generally don't have the required relevant experience. (Case in point is Eclipse. Personally I'm curious as to what Borland, who have excelled at usability for decades, are able to do with it with JBuilder 2007.)
I'm disheartened about this by the number of otherwise perfectly reasonable people who have insisted that I should pay money for a homeopathic dilution of zinc [wikipedia.org] to fight a cold virus.
"My last cold only lasted three days, must have been the Zicam," is so wrong on multiple levels, and it's a sad commentary on the state of education that such thinking is so widespread, although it's only fair to note that such has always been the case with regards to medicine.
As the wikipedia article you linked indicates, this "homeopathic dilution of zinc" is proven in clinical studies to be more effective than placebo in shortening colds. To not believe the result of clinical studies because it's called "homeopathy" or because the established medical profession doesn't prescribe it, is itself superstition and pseudoscience. Science is that which follows the scientific method, not necessarily that which is advocated by designated authorities. The fact that those who claim to advocate "science" are generally only advocating submission to the designated authorities, is what is sad commentary on the state of education.
Presumably they use some sort of version control for their source code, in which case methinks there is most likely one new programmer on the unemployment role.
If one of my kids told me to "f-off" they wouldn't be leaving their room for a month.
Since one of the reasons why children don't have full legal rights but are under their parent's power is that they don't have sufficient self-control to use them wisely, I have to question the wisdom of your statement. A month-long detention is absurdly harsh punishment for a mere insult (and a mild one at that), likely shouted out on impulse in the first place, and it won't stop such impulsive behavior in the future, since its cause is organic immaturity of a child's brain.
How do you think I child develops that self-control? It is through receiving consequences for his actions, preferably starting at an early age. It is also how many important values, such as respect, are instilled. If you think that telling a parent to f-off is a "mild insult," then respect might be a value you haven't yet learned.
Translation: Remember when we copied Google in the whole mapping and Google Earth thing? Yeah, that was actually totally our idea. I don't recall who came first but I'm certain it was Microsoft.
He wasn't making this point, but Microsoft was first on that. I was using terraserver.microsoft.com possibly before Google was even incorporated, definitely before google earth or google maps existed.
The simple reality is that insurance costs a lot because the BMWs, mansions, property, etc that people who own insurance companies like to own cost a lot. As the price of the luxury goods that the people who run these FOR PROFIT companies.
Wow. You must have studied economics at the North Korean Polytechnical Institute. Insurance prices are actually determined by supply and demand. The fact that the owners would like to maximize their income, doesn't not make them different from anyone else, or from any other industry or private enterprise.
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So the constitutional right to freedom of speech make the Disturbance of Peace laws invalid? No, I don't think so. This kid could have said whatever he wanted outside without depriving the people in the forum of their turns to speak. Fortunately, the constitution DOESN'T prohibit organized forums with rules.
There you go. They had been trying to subdue him on the ground by conventional tactics for several minutes unsuccessfully. So the taser was justified. Case closed.
The rule of law should exist as much on campuses as anywhere else. He wasn't tasered as a means of education, he was tasered so they could get cuffs on him. The point of "civil disobedience" is to disobey unconscionable laws or rules, with the full expectation of paying the consequences. The rule that everyone gets a chance to speak is not unconscionable, and even if it were, if he's determined to disobey it, he should accept the consequence of being kicked out. If he refuses to be kicked out, he should accept the consequence of physical force. If he learns that there are inevitable consequences for actions, I guess his education won't have been for nothing.
Are you serious? People have made their own podiums, or have spoken at public podiums IN THEIR TURN. Do you actually imagine George Washington filibustering against the rules at the Continental Congress? In that case, NO ONE spoke twice until EVERYONE in the place had spoken once! This country was NOT made great by egomaniacs rushing podiums or trying to forcibly take the right to speak from others, as this young man did.
"The argument over which is better, VI or Emacs, is perfectly val*ZZZZAP!!*GUAAAHHHHHGH!*"
At least "GUAAAHHHHHGH!" is slightly manly. This guy should be ashamed for his "OWWW! OWWW! OWWW! OWWW! OWWW! POLICE BRUTALITY! I'M A PUSSY!"
I suppose that's a question that will be reviewed: Under what circumstances can you use a taser. On a healthy person, it's pretty harmless. In this case, it did not look to me like they were able to get the cuffs on him until after they tasered him. Clearly, once they tasered him, they were able to get him out, whereas they couldn't before. So to me it seems justified. If you can only use the taser in a case of immediate danger, then it probably wouldn't qualify, but since they used it, chances are they don't have that rule.
Yes. You can see six officer struggling with him for several minutes trying to get cuffs on him. After they tasered him, they were finally able to do so, and escort him out. (At that point, all his energy was being put into saying "ow, ow, ow, ow, police brutality.") My only hope is that at trial the bailiff is armed with a taser as well, as it looks like he'll need it.
Well said. It blows my mind, these paranoids running around talking about the US government trying to silence the people, eliminate opposition, blah blah blah. It's a total disconnect with reality and obsession over an orwellian cold war mentality that is no longer relevant... at least it's not relevant in the US. The government couldn't give a crap about opposition. The protesters at the anti-war rally the other day got bummed out because the cops wouldn't arrest them for their "die in" so they had start climbing over capital building security fences to get arrested. In this country you can say whatever the hell you want, short of a credible threat of violence, and you can do whatever you want, short of messing with other people's lives. That's the reality. If it doesn't conform to your persecution fetish, I'm terribly sorry. Live with it, or move somewhere where you will be actually be persecuted, so you can bitch about it without being utterly insane.
WTF are you talking about? These are weapons of war and military intelligence, designed to be used in war zones; such as when they're searching house to house for insurgents, or clearing a building. The government is not keeping tables of "gait DNA" of the citizens. It's not a giant conspiracy to find and confiscate your pot. Other than a few crackpots like Hillary Clinton (with her "fairness doctrine"), no one in the government is campaigning to eliminate opposition.
Um, yes. These are military programs. Developed by DARPA, along with other technology that is most needed in Iraq and Afganistan, like instant automatic translators.
Oh, yes, I forgot, Al Gore has the new formulation of morality, all based upon his climatological alchemy. You would refrain from killing me because doing so would release carbon into the atmosphere. Of course you could do it anyway if you could afford the carbon offsets -- oops! back to economics again.
The rate of temperature change is "unprecedented"? You can't be serious. The rate of change is nothing compared to the end of the ice age around 12kya. Nor is there any evidence that the rate of change is unusual compared to the relatively stable temperature since then. Nor is there a shred of evidence that the existing change is unnatural.
The dustbowl and the current Australian drought are examples of cyclical local climate fluctuations. While it is a serious thing, it is neither global nor because of CO2.
The arctic was melting during the dustbowl as well. It didn't last 40-50yrs, and this one won't either. Such predictions are wishful thinking on the part of apocalypse mongers. When we don't understand some process, it's natural to be afraid it will never stop. Like some stereotypical savage seeing an eclipse and thinking the sun isn't going to come back. However, I think that actual savages were more rational than us, as they observed that nature operates in cycles -- something that modern man is apparently oblivious to.
I agree that understanding the climate is vital to the preservation of civilization. Most importantly, there is an Ice Age coming, and if we want to preserve our way of life, we have to find a way to stop it. I to admire the work of scientists over the last few decades, but when you talk about "consensus predictions" it makes me think that you haven't actually read the work.
There was a recent analysis of peer-reviewed climate research that finds that the work of over 500 scientists is undermining what is trying to be passed off by as "consensus" by snake oil salesmen. The ACTUAL scientific consensus includes the facts that
"1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age; 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance; 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate."
So you'd have the U.S. government performing environmental inspections in foreign countries? I don't think these countries are going to take kindly to that. It would require military conflict in a lot of cases. The world doesn't belong to the US. Each country has its own independent responsibility to protect its people and its environment.
The idea of Nike paying US minimum wage in China... I'm speechless. It would just mean Nike would go out of business and a Chinese company would take its place, and we would import shoes from them.
Religion has never existed for the purpose of offering explanations for natural phenomenon. If you really think the Zeus mythology was invented to explain lightning, or that Isis, Osiris, or Horus were invented to explain the motion of the sun, then YOU are the victim of gullibility, and have a non-critical willingness to believe in the abject irrationality and absurdity of your forebearers of just a couple hundred generations before you. These matters have always pertained to spirit. Those who have seen nothing other than literal stories are those who never examine them, and don't care to think about such things more deeply. The idea that the understanding of psychology and the mind is "becoming more complete" is likewise gullible wishful thinking. There is just as much lack of critical thinking in science as in religion. Correct thinking should be applied to both, but it's rare to find it in any context.
The idea that religion is explained by people who never question what their parents have told them is silly. While I don't have statistics, most religious people I know, rejected the beliefs of their parents, either permanently, or to later find truth in it as adults.
My explanation for atheists is that they have never been exposed to anything but the most simplistic religious thought, and are too anxious to feel intellectually superior to religious people to seriously investigate anything that isn't condoned by the scientific hierarchy and their peers.
Modding a post down simply because you disagree with it is a violation of the rules. CmdrTaco requests that such mods are reported to him so that he can ban such people from modding.
The problem has nothing to do with actual climatology. The problem is the crap that Al Gore says, and people believe, and advocate economic policy based upon.
This is insightful, not a troll.
What specific ice core data suggests that the passage wasn't open in the Medieval Warm Period?
It's no mystery. It was a whole lot warmer in the last interglacial, 120kya, than any serious predictions for this one. The significantly warmer temps of the last interglacial are not in dispute. No "runaway global warming" ensued. Rather, an Ice Age ensued, just like after all the other interglacials.
I don't know how many people here are willing to hear it, but this is the biggest problem in general with OSS. It tends to be written by academics who may "computer science" experts, but are clueless as to what constitutes usability, as they generally don't have the required relevant experience. (Case in point is Eclipse. Personally I'm curious as to what Borland, who have excelled at usability for decades, are able to do with it with JBuilder 2007.)
My German may be a bit rusty, but I think they were saying something about a Master Race and a new air invasion of Britain.
As the wikipedia article you linked indicates, this "homeopathic dilution of zinc" is proven in clinical studies to be more effective than placebo in shortening colds. To not believe the result of clinical studies because it's called "homeopathy" or because the established medical profession doesn't prescribe it, is itself superstition and pseudoscience. Science is that which follows the scientific method, not necessarily that which is advocated by designated authorities. The fact that those who claim to advocate "science" are generally only advocating submission to the designated authorities, is what is sad commentary on the state of education.
Presumably they use some sort of version control for their source code, in which case methinks there is most likely one new programmer on the unemployment role.
How do you think I child develops that self-control? It is through receiving consequences for his actions, preferably starting at an early age. It is also how many important values, such as respect, are instilled. If you think that telling a parent to f-off is a "mild insult," then respect might be a value you haven't yet learned.
He wasn't making this point, but Microsoft was first on that. I was using terraserver.microsoft.com possibly before Google was even incorporated, definitely before google earth or google maps existed.
Wow. You must have studied economics at the North Korean Polytechnical Institute. Insurance prices are actually determined by supply and demand. The fact that the owners would like to maximize their income, doesn't not make them different from anyone else, or from any other industry or private enterprise.