So I was browsing Wikipedia and came across the following definition for "fascism":
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Hm. Committed nationalist militants working in collaboration with "traditional elites", such as large telcos.
Mad-cat, that's some mighty fine commenting there. I salute you.
So let me just ask one last question: given all of the foregoing, how do you feel about Taser International suing coroners, making up a new diagnostic term ('excited delirium'), etc.? Are they right to act as TFA states? Or are they trying to avoid the accountability we both value?
Thanks and enjoy the rest of the day.
PS. The interested reader may enjoy parsing Taser International's point of view on liability and riskhere. (Police officers take note: that's *your* liability, not theirs.)
That's one interesting Web site. I did not know that:
- There will be a Mock Prison Riot in Moundsburg, WV, on May 11-14;
- Tasers come in designer colors and have built-in video cameras;
- There's a Taser Training Academy.
Me neither! That's why I'm always VERY careful never to:
- be black
- be poor
- have a funny haircut
- ask questions
- take pictures
- say the wrong thing
- vote for the wrong people
- etc.
OK, can I ask you some questions to maybe help de-FUD the debate:
1. It's clear that some individuals, because they were full of illegal drugs or possibly for other reasons, have died after being shot by tasers. It's also been asserted that at least one police officer has died in a training exercise after being shot by a taser; presumably he or she was not full of illegal drugs. So, knowing this and assuming the above is true, would you willingly be shot by a taser again as part of a training exercise?
2. You stated that the taser must be used appropriately, and made reference to drugs and unnamed medical issues. Could you define more specifically what that means? Having read the TFA, do you think there is a possibilty that the taser is being used inappropriately either by accident or on purpose?
3. As a police officer, you and your coworkers are obviously constantly in situations where you're subjected to serious bodily harm, and let me be the first to say that as a citizen I deeply appreciate it and think the police are not supported as well as they should be from a financial and operational perspective. That being said, do you believe that the mitigation of serious injury is worth the death of a suspect? Put another way, would you forego the use of the taser and accept increased risk of bodily harm if you thought there was a heightened risk of the suspect's death?
4. Per 3) above, I also strongly believe that a civilized society needs to rigorously oversee the use of force to enforce the law. Are you comfortable with the level of oversight that a coroner's inquest provides on the use of both lethal and nonlethal force? If not, why not?
5. It seems clear to me that in seeking the decision referenced in TFA, Taser International is motivated by the desire to avoid liability for the use or misuse of their product, and perhaps less so by the desire to protect officers. Do you agree? If not, why not?
All of the above assuming that you have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than post to Slashdot. Feel free to ignore.
Uh huh, and that explains why Taser International is threatening to sue coroners who cite it as a contributing factor to cause of death. It's not because the product kills people every now and then and they might not sell as many tasers to cops if that becomes widely known. It's the cops they care about! That thin blue line between civilization and chaos!
Look, I think everyone agrees that cops need to be able to subdue violent people with as little lethal force used as possible. To the extent that tasers, stun guns, etc. contribute to that goal, fine. The point is that Taser International's commercial interests may not necessarily coincide with that goal (i.e. the product can be abused, or should not be used in some circumstances), and Taser International may not be interested in owning up to that fact for marketing reasons.
Coroners, who are obligated to determine cause of death as accurately as possible, should be able to opine that the use of a taser contributed to cause of death when that is in fact the case, end of story. That is, assuming you want cops to be accountable. It was interesting to scroll down the comments in TFA to note the number of people who apparently think cops should just be able to pull people off the street and kill them in custody.
The Internet, and in particular Web 2.0 and the interactive/collaborative opportunities it creates, have pretty much already been coopted into the trivialization of thought and discourse. For every Wikipedia article there are hundreds of lame blog posts on boneheaded topics (including, for some of you, this one!). From an epistomological perspective, the Internet/television convergence is only accelerated by Web 2.0 technology, because the medium conditions us to behave trivially, a sizable fraction of people like it that way, and the economics of the medium tend to reinforce and extend that use.
The interested reader may also want to check out Neil Postmans's magnum opus on the death blow television has administered to our public discourse, written some twenty years ago.
Exactly. And as long as this continues, the clearer the speciousness of the administration's claims becomes. The clock is on the Democrats' side now, and they know it.
Not to be redundant, because it's linked in the Wikipedia article you cite and probably elsewhere in this thread, but Slashdot readers may find this to be a particularly interesting read.
Storage management, i.e. any skill specific to disk array management/maintenance. Cabling, period. Typing, for most users. Reading, for a significant fraction of users.
Your argument seems almost deliberately obtuse. Sure, we can take literally Youtube's stance that this was a mere TOS violation, but the fact that they do not remove similar content when they could presumably do so easily makes that stance suspect. The fact that this was political speech is quite relevant in this context. Just as the previous poster is wrong to leap to the 'censorship' conclusion, to state unequivocally that this is just another TOS violation is to aggressively miss the point.
The whole case underscores the problem of private forums taking on some of the aspects of a common medium, which seems to be an unfortunate by-product of Youtube's critical mass.
Some historians, notably Richard Rhodes, have theorized that the German mismeasurement of the cross-section of graphite was sabotaged by the scientists who did it.
Slashdot Mirror
So I was browsing Wikipedia and came across the following definition for "fascism":
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Hm. Committed nationalist militants working in collaboration with "traditional elites", such as large telcos.
Discuss.
Your troll-fu is weak, my son. 891 comments so far and only two replies to your post (including this one).
They wont even be able to do this
Sure they will. It just won't work.
Mad-cat, that's some mighty fine commenting there. I salute you.
So let me just ask one last question: given all of the foregoing, how do you feel about Taser International suing coroners, making up a new diagnostic term ('excited delirium'), etc.? Are they right to act as TFA states? Or are they trying to avoid the accountability we both value?
Thanks and enjoy the rest of the day.
PS. The interested reader may enjoy parsing Taser International's point of view on liability and riskhere. (Police officers take note: that's *your* liability, not theirs.)
That's one interesting Web site. I did not know that:
- There will be a Mock Prison Riot in Moundsburg, WV, on May 11-14;
- Tasers come in designer colors and have built-in video cameras;
- There's a Taser Training Academy.
I NEVER start shit with them.
Me neither! That's why I'm always VERY careful never to:
- be black
- be poor
- have a funny haircut
- ask questions
- take pictures
- say the wrong thing
- vote for the wrong people
- etc.
Imagine a pool of gasoline and throw a match on it.
like a piece of Styrofoam submerged in water
Now I know what to do with myself on this slow Sunday morning.
OK, can I ask you some questions to maybe help de-FUD the debate:
1. It's clear that some individuals, because they were full of illegal drugs or possibly for other reasons, have died after being shot by tasers. It's also been asserted that at least one police officer has died in a training exercise after being shot by a taser; presumably he or she was not full of illegal drugs. So, knowing this and assuming the above is true, would you willingly be shot by a taser again as part of a training exercise?
2. You stated that the taser must be used appropriately, and made reference to drugs and unnamed medical issues. Could you define more specifically what that means? Having read the TFA, do you think there is a possibilty that the taser is being used inappropriately either by accident or on purpose?
3. As a police officer, you and your coworkers are obviously constantly in situations where you're subjected to serious bodily harm, and let me be the first to say that as a citizen I deeply appreciate it and think the police are not supported as well as they should be from a financial and operational perspective. That being said, do you believe that the mitigation of serious injury is worth the death of a suspect? Put another way, would you forego the use of the taser and accept increased risk of bodily harm if you thought there was a heightened risk of the suspect's death?
4. Per 3) above, I also strongly believe that a civilized society needs to rigorously oversee the use of force to enforce the law. Are you comfortable with the level of oversight that a coroner's inquest provides on the use of both lethal and nonlethal force? If not, why not?
5. It seems clear to me that in seeking the decision referenced in TFA, Taser International is motivated by the desire to avoid liability for the use or misuse of their product, and perhaps less so by the desire to protect officers. Do you agree? If not, why not?
All of the above assuming that you have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than post to Slashdot. Feel free to ignore.
Thanks for the thoughful commentary.
Uh huh, and that explains why Taser International is threatening to sue coroners who cite it as a contributing factor to cause of death. It's not because the product kills people every now and then and they might not sell as many tasers to cops if that becomes widely known. It's the cops they care about! That thin blue line between civilization and chaos!
Look, I think everyone agrees that cops need to be able to subdue violent people with as little lethal force used as possible. To the extent that tasers, stun guns, etc. contribute to that goal, fine. The point is that Taser International's commercial interests may not necessarily coincide with that goal (i.e. the product can be abused, or should not be used in some circumstances), and Taser International may not be interested in owning up to that fact for marketing reasons.
Coroners, who are obligated to determine cause of death as accurately as possible, should be able to opine that the use of a taser contributed to cause of death when that is in fact the case, end of story. That is, assuming you want cops to be accountable. It was interesting to scroll down the comments in TFA to note the number of people who apparently think cops should just be able to pull people off the street and kill them in custody.
Apparently excited delerium. is a very specialized mortal condition that only occurs when you're in police custody.
Right.
You can always find a dumb judge in America.
Two things about Clay Shirky's critique of TV:
1. He's right.
2. He is pissing in the wind.
The Internet, and in particular Web 2.0 and the interactive/collaborative opportunities it creates, have pretty much already been coopted into the trivialization of thought and discourse. For every Wikipedia article there are hundreds of lame blog posts on boneheaded topics (including, for some of you, this one!). From an epistomological perspective, the Internet/television convergence is only accelerated by Web 2.0 technology, because the medium conditions us to behave trivially, a sizable fraction of people like it that way, and the economics of the medium tend to reinforce and extend that use.
The interested reader may also want to check out Neil Postmans's magnum opus on the death blow television has administered to our public discourse, written some twenty years ago.
It strikes me that the viewing of Internet porn in class can be easily remedied with a water pistol.
...have the missing White House e-mails been located yet?
Exactly. And as long as this continues, the clearer the speciousness of the administration's claims becomes. The clock is on the Democrats' side now, and they know it.
While there's still never been a fake-chip sabotage or info hack on America by foreign countries or rogue groups
One wonders whether the reverse is true, and if so, why other countries are not freaking out about it...
I can think of at least two guys I'd like to volunteer for this duty. They'd be perfect, and they'll be available as early as January 21, 2009.
Your troll-fu is weak, my son. The proper moment for this post was over two weeks ago.
Now be nice. Irony parses inconsistently in digital formats.
Not to be redundant, because it's linked in the Wikipedia article you cite and probably elsewhere in this thread, but Slashdot readers may find this to be a particularly interesting read.
Storage management, i.e. any skill specific to disk array management/maintenance.
Cabling, period.
Typing, for most users.
Reading, for a significant fraction of users.
Looking at some of the crap Hollywood churns out these days, the convergence between professional and amateur cannot come too soon for me.
I can't believe I just wrote that.
It's not what you think. You're disgusting!
FTA: helium is a rebel, a loner, and it does not combine with other atoms while hydrogen does
Helium: the James Dean of elements. All by itself in the upper right hand corner of the periodic table.
Which I guess makes hydrogen the Paris Hilton of elements? Alone at the top??
Why oh why couldn't I have been a science journalist...
I'm sure he can secure his computer, but I wonder how well he can detect man-in-the-middle attacks.
Your argument seems almost deliberately obtuse. Sure, we can take literally Youtube's stance that this was a mere TOS violation, but the fact that they do not remove similar content when they could presumably do so easily makes that stance suspect. The fact that this was political speech is quite relevant in this context. Just as the previous poster is wrong to leap to the 'censorship' conclusion, to state unequivocally that this is just another TOS violation is to aggressively miss the point.
The whole case underscores the problem of private forums taking on some of the aspects of a common medium, which seems to be an unfortunate by-product of Youtube's critical mass.
I blame video games.
/bracing for media hysteria to follow
Well, someone had to say it.
Some historians, notably Richard Rhodes, have theorized that the German mismeasurement of the cross-section of graphite was sabotaged by the scientists who did it.