"reasonable suspicion" doesn't say "these facts taken together must equal a crime at least 51% of the time for there to be a suspicion." Again, and again, and-fucking-again, that is the legal standard known as "preponderance of the evidence," and is the standard required for a guilty verdict in a civil case. This is a much higher bar than is required to meet reasonable suspicion, or even "probable cause for arrest" (which is, incidentally, a higher standard to meet than reasonable suspicion, as well.)
"Reasonable suspicion" is a yes/no question: could a reasonable person conclude that these facts are indicative of a crime? If the answer is "yes" (and yes, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for "car emits radiation" that would make that scenario criminal), then the officer has *reasonable suspicion* to make a traffic stop and ask some questions. Finding a legitimate explanation for the facts ("I was injected with radioactive dye as part of a medical test earlier today"), the police officer found no probable cause for arrest, and so let the man go on his way.
Again, and again, and again, you people are completely misunderstanding what "reasonable suspicion" means. This is not a surprise, but it's still disappointing, to see this bastardized "legal" thinking here on slashdot. This is, after all, the same site where "beyond a reasonable doubt" is generally taken to mean "beyond the shadow of a doubt," such that any *possible* exonerating scenario imaginable, up to and including the intervention of aliens in a motherfucking spacecraft swooping down from the heavens is consider exculpatory. Well, exculpatory unless the person is a judge, a cop, or a CEO, in which case they're guilty until proven innocent, and there is no possible way they're not guilty, so don't even bother.
All I did was show that it seems substantially more likely for the average law enforcement officer to have a radiation detector triggered by radioactive medical tracers than nefarious criminal activity.
And once again, probabilities matter very little to the low bar of "reasonable suspicion." The only "probability" that must be satisfied is, "could a reasonable person reasonably SUSPECT that a crime may be in progress, may have occurred, or is about to occur." At that level, the police are well within their prerogative to stop you, ask you some questions to determine whether or not there's a "likelihood" a crime is being committed. "80% of people- this likelihood is known as "probable cause," which would give them grounds to arrest you, and charge you with a crime, and as I have said repeatedly, this is a *higher bar* than "reasonable suspicion."
In essence, reasonable suspicion gives the police grounds to investigate out of the ordinary events, which are - by their nature - suspicious. It does not require that "the fact present a 40% probability of not being a crime, and a 60% probability of being a crime." Requiring them to do that would make it impossible for a police officer to investigate anything as a possible crime, they would be forced to witness the crime being committed.
sufficient reasonable suspicion to detain you has yet to be determined by a judge.
It's a good thing they're not "detaining you." A noncustodial traffic stop - which is exactly what this was - is allowed with "reasonable suspicion." The courts have already ruled on this, and they say you're wrong.
Yes, because after investigation, they found there was no probable cause to arrest him and charge him with a crime.
But since you don't need either probable cause, or guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, there is no violation of his due process for them to have noticed he was emitting radiation, and investigated the source to determine whether or not a crime appeared to be in the offing.
The only requirement is that a reasonable person could reasonably suspect that the facts of the situation suggest a crime could be happening (or could have happened). Which is a very low standard. Which is why it's completely reasonable for the cop to have stopped him. Try again.
Why not? They already carry bags of weed and coke for the same purpose. What's a vial of small liquid?
Really? That's standard issue for police officers, now? If it is, why would they need a vial of radioactive liquid that would be much more dangerous than a baggie of weed, and serve the same purpose?
Sure, but they already had all those excuses, but they still decided to add "I smell marijuana" to the list anyway, as well as others.
"Reasonable suspicion" lets them make a traffic stop. Probable cause ("smelling marijuana") is what lets them search your car. The article says nothing about a search, just a traffic stop. So the only thing the cop needed was reasonable suspicion. A car emitting radiation is reasonably suspicious.
Really? Leaking radiation into the environment isn't a public safety risk or a criminal act? Remember, we're not talking about "Hurr he must be a terrorist," he could simply be transporting or improperly disposing of hazardous wastes.
And that... is a crime for which you can find numerous criminal suits as precedent.
If they see you sneaking around behind somebody's house, carrying a crowbar, they would have *reasonable suspicion* that you were doing something illegal, and would be well within their rights to stop and ask you what you were doing sneaking around behind the house with a crowbar.
Reasonable suspicion is a low threshold, and that's all thats required for a police officer to stop you and investigate something he thinks looks suspicious. They CAN ask you questions, and they DON'T need a particularly high threshold of proof to be able to do so.
I see. So in your world, police have no public safety role whatsoever? When somebody drives off the road because they have a heart attack behind the wheel, they don't respond? When a tree falls across a road, or a road washes out in a storm, police are never involved? When a house burns down, police ignore it? They're just there to arrest people?
You have no understanding of "reasonable suspicion," friend. It's not "given the facts, the only reasonable conclusion is that somebody is doing something illegal." That would be "Beyond a reasonable doubt," which is the standard of GUILT in criminal cases. Not the standard of suspicion (the much lower standard required to make a traffic stop), or even probably cause for arrest (which is even higher than what's required for a stop, and no arrest happened in this scenario).
Reasonable suspicion says, "given the facts, one of the conclusions you could reasonably reach is that there is something illegal going on here." Since most people transporting radioactive materials do so in properly shielded, marked, and placarded vehicles, it is a reasonable conclusion that somebody whose personal vehicle is emitting radiation is possibly transporting radioactive materials illegally, or even - from a public safety standpoint - that the person has been unwittingly exposed to radiation somehow and thus presents a health risk to himself or others, and thus might even appreciate being informed of that.
Please point me to the part of your chart that points out the health benefits of being exposed to any of those radiation levels? Because I'm not seeing it.
The human body being "capable of keeping up with the damage caused by a certain background level of radiation" does not make "exposure to radiation" a healthy choice. The human body is also "capable of sustaining massive injury and blood loss," but no doctor's going to tell you that losing half your blood supply is a new health fad.
Because that level of background radiation isn't high enough to indicate a threat
Really? What's the threshold of this detector? How much radiation was he giving off? What level of radiation is healthy? (Hint: There is no amount of radiation that is "healthy" to be exposed to. This would be why his doctors specifically told him to avoid close contact for several hours, and stay away from his infant for at least 24 hours).
I can only assume you know all of these facts, which is why you've concluded that this is a tyrannical police state activity. So why don't you make the case for why there's no reasonable suspicion when one car out of the hundreds traveling I-84 at that time was detected to be emitting radiation?
Actually, no, it's not a "*lot* more common," because patients that walk around constantly emitting ionizing radiation would be dead from radiation poisoning in very short order.
Given that the amount of radiation he was administered was equivalent to "several X-rays," if he were constantly emitting that same level of radiation, he wouldn't live very long. And he was specifically told by his doctor that he should stay away from his infant for 24 hours, and avoid close contact with other people for a few hours, too. If he poses a health hazard to the people around him, it is entirely reasonable to ask him to explain why that's the case.
Reasonable suspicion isn't guessing. Reasonable suspicion is a >50% chance that a crime has taken place.
No, that is "preponderance of evidence," which is the *standard of guilt* in civil cases. Reasonable suspicion, in contrast, is a low standard of proof in which a reasonable person could reasonably believe that someone has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity, and depends on the entire circumstance. Seeing someone driving down the street emitting radiation from their vehicle, a reasonable person could conclude that something criminal is going on: either the person is transporting radioactive materials unsafely, or their car has been exposed to radiation, in which case the car and its driver could unwittingly pose a public safety risk, or it could be a bomb or other contraband. These are all *reasonable* conclusions one could draw from the fact that there is "a car driving down the highway emitting some nontrivial amount of ionizing radiation," there is reasonable suspicion that a crime may have been committed.
That's enough for a traffic stop, for the officer to investigate. Which he did. And when he stopped the guy, and told him he was setting off radiation detectors, the guy said, "Yeah, I was injected with radioactive dye today for a health test, and I have this letter from my doctor, who actually warned me that this could happen." He provided that letter to the doctor, and he went on his way. Because there was no probable cause for an arrest - no probable cause supporting the conclusion that a crime actually had been committed.
Now, if there was probable cause (like, say, a bunch of wires and what appears to be a remote detonator sitting on the seat, or the police ask him to step out of the vehicle and frisk him and find a weapon), they'd be able to search the vehicle without a warrant and arrest him if they found probable cause to believe he was committing a crime.
After that, he would need to be found guilty by a preponderance of the evidence (irrelevant in this case, but if it were a civil case that would be the burden of proof), or beyond a reasonable doubt (in a criminal case).
Each of these is a *higher* standard of proof than the last. Reasonable Suspicion, Probable Cause, Preponderance of the Evidence, and Beyond Reasonable Doubt.
You do not have to satisfy the standard of evidence for legal trials to make a traffic stop, or make an arrest. You DO have to satisfy that standard of evidence, and even more, show beyond reasonable doubt, that he is guilty to get a conviction.
No it doesn't. It could also mean than a citizen who hasn't violated any laws but received radiation treatment is driving down the road. There is no probable cause whatsoever.
No, there's reasonable suspicion. Enough to initiate a traffic stop and investigate what's going on. Probable cause would be required for an arrest, which did not happen.
In fact, there is no case history of hobbyists transporting radioactive materials in such a grossly unsafe manner to set off police detectors.
Which would, again, create a *reasonable suspicion* that there is something illegal going on - since hobbyists have always been safe, and there's about a dozen possible reasons a car would be giving off radiation, and only one of them is "the guy may have been injected with a radioactive dye," a *reasonable* person could conclude that there is a likelihood of a crime being committed.
This implies that low setoff thresholds would likely be lawful citizens who received radiation treatment, which argues exactly the opposite direction as probable cause.
And probable cause is only needed to make an arrest, not initiate a traffic stop. This implies that radiation detected is very uncommon, and so when something very uncommon and known to be unhealthy to humans is detected, it is, in fact, reasonable to be suspicious that something illegal may have occurred, and to investigate the source of the radiation. And that's what happened.
"reasonable suspicion" is all that's required for a traffic stop - they notice you weaving, driving erratically, speeding, emitting radiation, taking a slug from a Jack Daniels bottle, running a red light, rolling through a stop sign, or violating a host of other safety rules.
If the traffic stop is valid - e.g., they can show there was 'reasonable suspicion' sufficient to stop the car - and the officer has probable cause to believe that there is contraband or evidence of a crime in the car, they may search the car without a warrant. Smelling or seeing alcohol, drugs, weapons, or any other possibly illegal substance certainly gives them probable cause to believe a crime is being committed. When they reach the threshold of probable cause, they may conduct a warrantless search of the vehicle, including any and all compartments of the vehicle which may contain the contraband or evidence.
They cannot search your car simply for "speeding," but if your car is registering as emitting radiation, it's hard to argue that that doesn't constitute "probable cause" for a search - either you're transporting radioactive materials unsafely (a crime), or you're the victim of some bizarre murder plot (a crime), and either way, the car would seem to be involved. It is both reasonable to stop you, and cause to believe there is a crime being committed.
Right, because cops are going to spend the time and effort carrying around a vial of radioactive material just so they can make random traffic stops and arrest people.
If they wanted to do that, they could simply say, "You were speeding," or "You were weaving," or "You didn't signal a turn," or "You didn't stop fully at a stop sign," and then say they thought they saw a weapon on the floor, but it turned out to just be your ice scraper or a coffee cup or some loose change.
If a cop wants to railroad you, he doesn't need a vial of radioactive strontium to do it.
Well, since all they need to stop you and investigate is *reasonable suspicion,* I'd say that this stop was entirely within the bounds of good sense and reason.
If the radioactive dye in his body was enough that they recommend he "stay away from infants" for 24 hours, and give him a note explaining that he has had a test where he was injected with radioactive materials, I'd say he's probably emitting a bit more than "background" radiation.
As such, there is a *reasonable* suspicion that something criminal is happening, because it is uncommon, and unhealthy, for people to walk around emitting ionizing radiation. It is *reasonable* for a police officer to say, "Wait, what? Why is this car emitting radiation?" Once he investigated the situation, it turns out that there was no cause for concern, and he sent the man on his way.
But that's really not the point. The point is that we waste more money than the mission would cost.
No, the point is that the proposed cost of the mission is orders of magnitude too low. And it would actually cost us numerous years of the entire federal budget to even hope to realize this project, because either:
1) We would have to invent, test, refine, and finalize every piece of industry required to "build it in space" (remember, digging ore out of a rock is the easy part - smelting, casting, storing and assembling, plus building the hundreds of assembly robots (or shipping, housing, and resupplying all of the human assemblers) is much larger in scale than ANYTHING we have ever attempted in space before. This makes the ISS look like making a scrambled egg.
2) We would have to build everything down here, and ship it up to orbit, at an exorbitant $/kg launch cost, where it would STILL need to be assembled by a fleet of robots and/or people specially built and trained for this single mission.
There is no chance in hell that the cost of this will run "only" to a trillion dollars. Realistically, we're probably talking TENS, perhaps HUNDREDS of trillions of dollars, not "one trillion." Because again, NONE of the technology we would need to build it up there in space has been developed, or scaled to the size we'd need. The space shuttle's total costs were nearly 200 billion. The ISS has cost us $150 billion. These are a SMALL fraction of the scale of the operation you're talking about here.
Do I think that mission is the best use for the money? Probably not. But it's better than what we are currently doing with it.
You could have stopped at "Probably not." Because if it's "probably not the best use for the money," then there is absolutely zero need or justification for spending it. If you're going to tax your citizens for a ridiculous boondoggle, you don't deserve to be running things. (And yes, I believe this sentiment applies to wasteful government spending in all categories. If it's not money well spent, you are incompetent and don't deserve to be in a position where you can spend that money.)
These are *descriptions* of the questions, ffs, not the questions themselves - it's a multiple choice test.
Go look at the questions on a sample test and tell me how unreasonable and unfair these questions are. They are simple math and science questions, and not exactly full of ambiguity.
Sure we can sit on our single rock in the sky and wait for the next climate changing disaster to wipe us out or we could, you know go elsewhere and maybe see what is there.
Or, we could learn how to adapt to our environment, and stop shitting in the only bed we're ever likely to have, instead of saying, "We'll get these magical starships that will whisk us away to some new home after we've destroyed this one." Because, "Why care about the environment? We can just go live somewhere else," is probably more disingenuous and foolish than saying "It'll be someone else's problem after I'm dead."
Because, you know, we KNOW what's "out there" already - a whole lot of NOTHING. A whole lot of incredibly hostile environment that will kill you in seconds. A whole lot of no air, temperatures that will either freeze you to death in seconds, or burn you to a crisp in seconds, radiation that will cook you more or less alive, a lack of gravity that will reduce your muscles to nothing, and leave your bones so weak they won't hold you upright. We have yet to find a planet that is naturally hospitable to humans, and any such planet we find is likely to be so far away and so prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to reach that we either never will reach it, or we will need to find a way to violate rules of physics governing the maximum speeds we're ever likely to be able to achieve.
Spare me the "colonization" and "save the species" arguments. If we spent 10% of the energy and materials required to reach another star right here on earth, spent it on improving the difficult problems of sustainable food growth & distribution, sustainable industry, and research into sustainable energy sources, we'd be infinitely better off, and wouldn't *need* to make up these fantasies about how we're totally going to zip around from star to star in starships someday.
Twinbee wrote, "Plus it's exciting. More exciting than say, oh I don't know, spending 1 trillion on blowing up the world or something."
To which Rodbee replied, "I didn't know the only alternative was to make bombs with the money."
To which YOU replied, "It's just what we are currently doing with it. GP could have said that it's better than throwing the money at training strippers, but since we aren't already doing that, and because that may actually garner a lot of support here, it would not have been as strong an argument."
Since, you know, "building bombs with the money," ("what we are currently doing with it," as you said) is, you know, "Defense spending," my point about the Defense budget being orders of magnitude too small for the purpose of "building a starship," even if you completely disbanded the military was quite topical.
Guess it's hard to think clearly when all the blood's maintaining that Star Trek hardon.
But I'm not talking annual budget I'm talking program budget
Yes, and the program budget is ridiculously underestimated, and likely to be *orders of magnitude* off the actual cost. So much so that you'd need to disband the military entirely for decades in order to pay for it "out of the defense budget."
Unless we've got zero-gravity mining, smelting, metalworking, and other tools to build all this stuff with already that I've never heard of... the entire industrial process from mining to assembly must be rethought and reworked, or we're going to ship every piece up from earth, decimating our own environment and exhausting our resources in the process. Not to mention, you can't just have 2 people assembling the thing, so you're looking at shipping tens or hundreds of astronauts into space, with no place for them to live, while they construct this ship. And then you have to keep shipping supplies up to them. Either this will be done with hundreds of robots that don't exist yet (and which must be developed), or you're talking trillions of dollars *just to start the operation.*
That's a big, and expensive toy. And if any person anywhere in the process screws up and connect something wrong, measures something wrong, assembles something wrong, or simply takes it in his head that he's gonna show those people not to discipline him for safety violations, you have a multi-trillion dollar fireball re-entering earth's atmosphere and (hopefully) breaking up and landing relatively harmlessly in the ocean, or (worst case) slamming into a populated area.
In short, the point is this: Building a giant spaceship in space is something that will not be "affordable" even if we disbanded the military entirely. It would require several years worth of our entire federal budget being spent to ever become a reality. And even then, it will be a ridiculously inefficient, ineffective, and mostly useless boondoggle.
About 700 billion of this year's 3.6 trillion budget is for defense spending. The rest is largely medicare, medicaid, social security, and other "social" spending.
I know everybody likes to pretend that we only spend money on building bombs, but that's demonstrably not the case.
Now, 700 billion is a lot of money, certainly. And certainly, you could probably enact quite a few cuts and save some money. But even eliminating military spending entirely would only cut the budget by about 20% - and you cannot just disband the military entirely, for obvious reasons. And 80% of the budget is being spent on things that are NOT building bombs.
We're going to need a fast ship if we're going to travel to another Earth-like planet and colonize it.
Right - "IF" we're going to do that. And barring significant breakthroughs in our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics (or suspension of the same), we won't. So why build something we'll never need? It's like building a ski lift in the middle of the Sahara: "Man, if it ever snows here, we're gonna have a great ski resort!"
So... a program to design & build small, atmospheric aircraft, which is pretty well-understood tech by this point, will cost "a lot more than a trillion dollars."
And you think we can build a functional "starship" for ONLY a trillion dollars? You're mad.
Slashdot Mirror
"reasonable suspicion" doesn't say "these facts taken together must equal a crime at least 51% of the time for there to be a suspicion." Again, and again, and-fucking-again, that is the legal standard known as "preponderance of the evidence," and is the standard required for a guilty verdict in a civil case. This is a much higher bar than is required to meet reasonable suspicion, or even "probable cause for arrest" (which is, incidentally, a higher standard to meet than reasonable suspicion, as well.)
"Reasonable suspicion" is a yes/no question: could a reasonable person conclude that these facts are indicative of a crime? If the answer is "yes" (and yes, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for "car emits radiation" that would make that scenario criminal), then the officer has *reasonable suspicion* to make a traffic stop and ask some questions. Finding a legitimate explanation for the facts ("I was injected with radioactive dye as part of a medical test earlier today"), the police officer found no probable cause for arrest, and so let the man go on his way.
Again, and again, and again, you people are completely misunderstanding what "reasonable suspicion" means. This is not a surprise, but it's still disappointing, to see this bastardized "legal" thinking here on slashdot. This is, after all, the same site where "beyond a reasonable doubt" is generally taken to mean "beyond the shadow of a doubt," such that any *possible* exonerating scenario imaginable, up to and including the intervention of aliens in a motherfucking spacecraft swooping down from the heavens is consider exculpatory. Well, exculpatory unless the person is a judge, a cop, or a CEO, in which case they're guilty until proven innocent, and there is no possible way they're not guilty, so don't even bother.
And once again, probabilities matter very little to the low bar of "reasonable suspicion." The only "probability" that must be satisfied is, "could a reasonable person reasonably SUSPECT that a crime may be in progress, may have occurred, or is about to occur." At that level, the police are well within their prerogative to stop you, ask you some questions to determine whether or not there's a "likelihood" a crime is being committed. "80% of people- this likelihood is known as "probable cause," which would give them grounds to arrest you, and charge you with a crime, and as I have said repeatedly, this is a *higher bar* than "reasonable suspicion."
In essence, reasonable suspicion gives the police grounds to investigate out of the ordinary events, which are - by their nature - suspicious. It does not require that "the fact present a 40% probability of not being a crime, and a 60% probability of being a crime." Requiring them to do that would make it impossible for a police officer to investigate anything as a possible crime, they would be forced to witness the crime being committed.
It's a good thing they're not "detaining you." A noncustodial traffic stop - which is exactly what this was - is allowed with "reasonable suspicion." The courts have already ruled on this, and they say you're wrong.
Yes, because after investigation, they found there was no probable cause to arrest him and charge him with a crime.
But since you don't need either probable cause, or guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, there is no violation of his due process for them to have noticed he was emitting radiation, and investigated the source to determine whether or not a crime appeared to be in the offing.
The only requirement is that a reasonable person could reasonably suspect that the facts of the situation suggest a crime could be happening (or could have happened). Which is a very low standard. Which is why it's completely reasonable for the cop to have stopped him. Try again.
Really? That's standard issue for police officers, now? If it is, why would they need a vial of radioactive liquid that would be much more dangerous than a baggie of weed, and serve the same purpose?
"Reasonable suspicion" lets them make a traffic stop. Probable cause ("smelling marijuana") is what lets them search your car. The article says nothing about a search, just a traffic stop. So the only thing the cop needed was reasonable suspicion. A car emitting radiation is reasonably suspicious.
Really? Leaking radiation into the environment isn't a public safety risk or a criminal act? Remember, we're not talking about "Hurr he must be a terrorist," he could simply be transporting or improperly disposing of hazardous wastes.
And that... is a crime for which you can find numerous criminal suits as precedent.
If they see you sneaking around behind somebody's house, carrying a crowbar, they would have *reasonable suspicion* that you were doing something illegal, and would be well within their rights to stop and ask you what you were doing sneaking around behind the house with a crowbar.
Reasonable suspicion is a low threshold, and that's all thats required for a police officer to stop you and investigate something he thinks looks suspicious. They CAN ask you questions, and they DON'T need a particularly high threshold of proof to be able to do so.
I see. So in your world, police have no public safety role whatsoever? When somebody drives off the road because they have a heart attack behind the wheel, they don't respond? When a tree falls across a road, or a road washes out in a storm, police are never involved? When a house burns down, police ignore it? They're just there to arrest people?
You have no understanding of "reasonable suspicion," friend. It's not "given the facts, the only reasonable conclusion is that somebody is doing something illegal." That would be "Beyond a reasonable doubt," which is the standard of GUILT in criminal cases. Not the standard of suspicion (the much lower standard required to make a traffic stop), or even probably cause for arrest (which is even higher than what's required for a stop, and no arrest happened in this scenario).
Reasonable suspicion says, "given the facts, one of the conclusions you could reasonably reach is that there is something illegal going on here." Since most people transporting radioactive materials do so in properly shielded, marked, and placarded vehicles, it is a reasonable conclusion that somebody whose personal vehicle is emitting radiation is possibly transporting radioactive materials illegally, or even - from a public safety standpoint - that the person has been unwittingly exposed to radiation somehow and thus presents a health risk to himself or others, and thus might even appreciate being informed of that.
Please point me to the part of your chart that points out the health benefits of being exposed to any of those radiation levels? Because I'm not seeing it.
The human body being "capable of keeping up with the damage caused by a certain background level of radiation" does not make "exposure to radiation" a healthy choice. The human body is also "capable of sustaining massive injury and blood loss," but no doctor's going to tell you that losing half your blood supply is a new health fad.
Transporting radioactive materials without adequate safety precautions, sufficient shielding, and appropriate hazmat signage isn't against the law?
Wow, You're right. I bet I could throw a bunch of Uranium in my trunk and drive it across the country, no questions asked.
Really? What's the threshold of this detector? How much radiation was he giving off? What level of radiation is healthy? (Hint: There is no amount of radiation that is "healthy" to be exposed to. This would be why his doctors specifically told him to avoid close contact for several hours, and stay away from his infant for at least 24 hours).
I can only assume you know all of these facts, which is why you've concluded that this is a tyrannical police state activity. So why don't you make the case for why there's no reasonable suspicion when one car out of the hundreds traveling I-84 at that time was detected to be emitting radiation?
Please explain how it doesn't meet the reasonable suspicion required for a traffic stop, then, Matlock?
Actually, no, it's not a "*lot* more common," because patients that walk around constantly emitting ionizing radiation would be dead from radiation poisoning in very short order.
Given that the amount of radiation he was administered was equivalent to "several X-rays," if he were constantly emitting that same level of radiation, he wouldn't live very long. And he was specifically told by his doctor that he should stay away from his infant for 24 hours, and avoid close contact with other people for a few hours, too. If he poses a health hazard to the people around him, it is entirely reasonable to ask him to explain why that's the case.
No, that is "preponderance of evidence," which is the *standard of guilt* in civil cases. Reasonable suspicion, in contrast, is a low standard of proof in which a reasonable person could reasonably believe that someone has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity, and depends on the entire circumstance. Seeing someone driving down the street emitting radiation from their vehicle, a reasonable person could conclude that something criminal is going on: either the person is transporting radioactive materials unsafely, or their car has been exposed to radiation, in which case the car and its driver could unwittingly pose a public safety risk, or it could be a bomb or other contraband. These are all *reasonable* conclusions one could draw from the fact that there is "a car driving down the highway emitting some nontrivial amount of ionizing radiation," there is reasonable suspicion that a crime may have been committed.
That's enough for a traffic stop, for the officer to investigate. Which he did. And when he stopped the guy, and told him he was setting off radiation detectors, the guy said, "Yeah, I was injected with radioactive dye today for a health test, and I have this letter from my doctor, who actually warned me that this could happen." He provided that letter to the doctor, and he went on his way. Because there was no probable cause for an arrest - no probable cause supporting the conclusion that a crime actually had been committed.
Now, if there was probable cause (like, say, a bunch of wires and what appears to be a remote detonator sitting on the seat, or the police ask him to step out of the vehicle and frisk him and find a weapon), they'd be able to search the vehicle without a warrant and arrest him if they found probable cause to believe he was committing a crime.
After that, he would need to be found guilty by a preponderance of the evidence (irrelevant in this case, but if it were a civil case that would be the burden of proof), or beyond a reasonable doubt (in a criminal case).
Each of these is a *higher* standard of proof than the last. Reasonable Suspicion, Probable Cause, Preponderance of the Evidence, and Beyond Reasonable Doubt.
You do not have to satisfy the standard of evidence for legal trials to make a traffic stop, or make an arrest. You DO have to satisfy that standard of evidence, and even more, show beyond reasonable doubt, that he is guilty to get a conviction.
No, there's reasonable suspicion. Enough to initiate a traffic stop and investigate what's going on. Probable cause would be required for an arrest, which did not happen.
Which would, again, create a *reasonable suspicion* that there is something illegal going on - since hobbyists have always been safe, and there's about a dozen possible reasons a car would be giving off radiation, and only one of them is "the guy may have been injected with a radioactive dye," a *reasonable* person could conclude that there is a likelihood of a crime being committed.
And probable cause is only needed to make an arrest, not initiate a traffic stop. This implies that radiation detected is very uncommon, and so when something very uncommon and known to be unhealthy to humans is detected, it is, in fact, reasonable to be suspicious that something illegal may have occurred, and to investigate the source of the radiation. And that's what happened.
"reasonable suspicion" is all that's required for a traffic stop - they notice you weaving, driving erratically, speeding, emitting radiation, taking a slug from a Jack Daniels bottle, running a red light, rolling through a stop sign, or violating a host of other safety rules.
If the traffic stop is valid - e.g., they can show there was 'reasonable suspicion' sufficient to stop the car - and the officer has probable cause to believe that there is contraband or evidence of a crime in the car, they may search the car without a warrant. Smelling or seeing alcohol, drugs, weapons, or any other possibly illegal substance certainly gives them probable cause to believe a crime is being committed. When they reach the threshold of probable cause, they may conduct a warrantless search of the vehicle, including any and all compartments of the vehicle which may contain the contraband or evidence.
They cannot search your car simply for "speeding," but if your car is registering as emitting radiation, it's hard to argue that that doesn't constitute "probable cause" for a search - either you're transporting radioactive materials unsafely (a crime), or you're the victim of some bizarre murder plot (a crime), and either way, the car would seem to be involved. It is both reasonable to stop you, and cause to believe there is a crime being committed.
Right, because cops are going to spend the time and effort carrying around a vial of radioactive material just so they can make random traffic stops and arrest people.
If they wanted to do that, they could simply say, "You were speeding," or "You were weaving," or "You didn't signal a turn," or "You didn't stop fully at a stop sign," and then say they thought they saw a weapon on the floor, but it turned out to just be your ice scraper or a coffee cup or some loose change.
If a cop wants to railroad you, he doesn't need a vial of radioactive strontium to do it.
Well, since all they need to stop you and investigate is *reasonable suspicion,* I'd say that this stop was entirely within the bounds of good sense and reason.
If the radioactive dye in his body was enough that they recommend he "stay away from infants" for 24 hours, and give him a note explaining that he has had a test where he was injected with radioactive materials, I'd say he's probably emitting a bit more than "background" radiation.
As such, there is a *reasonable* suspicion that something criminal is happening, because it is uncommon, and unhealthy, for people to walk around emitting ionizing radiation. It is *reasonable* for a police officer to say, "Wait, what? Why is this car emitting radiation?" Once he investigated the situation, it turns out that there was no cause for concern, and he sent the man on his way.
This is exactly how it's supposed to work.
No, the point is that the proposed cost of the mission is orders of magnitude too low. And it would actually cost us numerous years of the entire federal budget to even hope to realize this project, because either:
1) We would have to invent, test, refine, and finalize every piece of industry required to "build it in space" (remember, digging ore out of a rock is the easy part - smelting, casting, storing and assembling, plus building the hundreds of assembly robots (or shipping, housing, and resupplying all of the human assemblers) is much larger in scale than ANYTHING we have ever attempted in space before. This makes the ISS look like making a scrambled egg.
2) We would have to build everything down here, and ship it up to orbit, at an exorbitant $/kg launch cost, where it would STILL need to be assembled by a fleet of robots and/or people specially built and trained for this single mission.
There is no chance in hell that the cost of this will run "only" to a trillion dollars. Realistically, we're probably talking TENS, perhaps HUNDREDS of trillions of dollars, not "one trillion." Because again, NONE of the technology we would need to build it up there in space has been developed, or scaled to the size we'd need. The space shuttle's total costs were nearly 200 billion. The ISS has cost us $150 billion. These are a SMALL fraction of the scale of the operation you're talking about here.
You could have stopped at "Probably not." Because if it's "probably not the best use for the money," then there is absolutely zero need or justification for spending it. If you're going to tax your citizens for a ridiculous boondoggle, you don't deserve to be running things. (And yes, I believe this sentiment applies to wasteful government spending in all categories. If it's not money well spent, you are incompetent and don't deserve to be in a position where you can spend that money.)
These are *descriptions* of the questions, ffs, not the questions themselves - it's a multiple choice test.
Go look at the questions on a sample test and tell me how unreasonable and unfair these questions are. They are simple math and science questions, and not exactly full of ambiguity.
Or, we could learn how to adapt to our environment, and stop shitting in the only bed we're ever likely to have, instead of saying, "We'll get these magical starships that will whisk us away to some new home after we've destroyed this one." Because, "Why care about the environment? We can just go live somewhere else," is probably more disingenuous and foolish than saying "It'll be someone else's problem after I'm dead."
Because, you know, we KNOW what's "out there" already - a whole lot of NOTHING. A whole lot of incredibly hostile environment that will kill you in seconds. A whole lot of no air, temperatures that will either freeze you to death in seconds, or burn you to a crisp in seconds, radiation that will cook you more or less alive, a lack of gravity that will reduce your muscles to nothing, and leave your bones so weak they won't hold you upright. We have yet to find a planet that is naturally hospitable to humans, and any such planet we find is likely to be so far away and so prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to reach that we either never will reach it, or we will need to find a way to violate rules of physics governing the maximum speeds we're ever likely to be able to achieve.
Spare me the "colonization" and "save the species" arguments. If we spent 10% of the energy and materials required to reach another star right here on earth, spent it on improving the difficult problems of sustainable food growth & distribution, sustainable industry, and research into sustainable energy sources, we'd be infinitely better off, and wouldn't *need* to make up these fantasies about how we're totally going to zip around from star to star in starships someday.
Here, let me refresh your memory:
Twinbee wrote, "Plus it's exciting. More exciting than say, oh I don't know, spending 1 trillion on blowing up the world or something."
To which Rodbee replied, "I didn't know the only alternative was to make bombs with the money."
To which YOU replied, "It's just what we are currently doing with it. GP could have said that it's better than throwing the money at training strippers, but since we aren't already doing that, and because that may actually garner a lot of support here, it would not have been as strong an argument."
Since, you know, "building bombs with the money," ("what we are currently doing with it," as you said) is, you know, "Defense spending," my point about the Defense budget being orders of magnitude too small for the purpose of "building a starship," even if you completely disbanded the military was quite topical.
Guess it's hard to think clearly when all the blood's maintaining that Star Trek hardon.
Yes, and the program budget is ridiculously underestimated, and likely to be *orders of magnitude* off the actual cost. So much so that you'd need to disband the military entirely for decades in order to pay for it "out of the defense budget."
Unless we've got zero-gravity mining, smelting, metalworking, and other tools to build all this stuff with already that I've never heard of... the entire industrial process from mining to assembly must be rethought and reworked, or we're going to ship every piece up from earth, decimating our own environment and exhausting our resources in the process. Not to mention, you can't just have 2 people assembling the thing, so you're looking at shipping tens or hundreds of astronauts into space, with no place for them to live, while they construct this ship. And then you have to keep shipping supplies up to them. Either this will be done with hundreds of robots that don't exist yet (and which must be developed), or you're talking trillions of dollars *just to start the operation.*
That's a big, and expensive toy. And if any person anywhere in the process screws up and connect something wrong, measures something wrong, assembles something wrong, or simply takes it in his head that he's gonna show those people not to discipline him for safety violations, you have a multi-trillion dollar fireball re-entering earth's atmosphere and (hopefully) breaking up and landing relatively harmlessly in the ocean, or (worst case) slamming into a populated area.
In short, the point is this: Building a giant spaceship in space is something that will not be "affordable" even if we disbanded the military entirely. It would require several years worth of our entire federal budget being spent to ever become a reality. And even then, it will be a ridiculously inefficient, ineffective, and mostly useless boondoggle.
About 700 billion of this year's 3.6 trillion budget is for defense spending. The rest is largely medicare, medicaid, social security, and other "social" spending.
I know everybody likes to pretend that we only spend money on building bombs, but that's demonstrably not the case.
Now, 700 billion is a lot of money, certainly. And certainly, you could probably enact quite a few cuts and save some money. But even eliminating military spending entirely would only cut the budget by about 20% - and you cannot just disband the military entirely, for obvious reasons. And 80% of the budget is being spent on things that are NOT building bombs.
Right - "IF" we're going to do that. And barring significant breakthroughs in our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics (or suspension of the same), we won't. So why build something we'll never need? It's like building a ski lift in the middle of the Sahara: "Man, if it ever snows here, we're gonna have a great ski resort!"
So... a program to design & build small, atmospheric aircraft, which is pretty well-understood tech by this point, will cost "a lot more than a trillion dollars."
And you think we can build a functional "starship" for ONLY a trillion dollars? You're mad.