The law of defamation varies from state to state in the USA, and is spelled out in the statutes; these are then interpreted by the courts, and the outcomes of lawsuits set precedents.
The Constitution states that all rights not granted to federal government are reserved to the states or to the people, which includes the right to be free from defamation. Different states protect that right in different ways. The Constitution does NOT "force us to accept criticism." It protects freedom of speech in a variety of circumstances, but the courts have long since held that this does not include sanctioning defamation.
Also, the law is different all over Europe, as you really ought to know.
Yeah, I really want my school wiring my kid up to some machine without telling me about it or asking my permission. Not.
Let's see, formalized education began with the ancient Egyptians, so we're looking at maybe 5000 years total, and NOW students need heart monitors? Wasteful rubbish. If there's a kid with a heart problem, give HIM the heart monitor.
Tell them you refuse permission. Maybe they'll yank the kid out of PE entirely, which frankly would be best anyway; PE never taught anybody anything useful in its entire existence. Send the kid to study hall instead and make him read Dickens or Shakespeare while other kids are wasting their lives running around with heart monitors on.
Makes about as much sense as debating the literal truth of Grimm's fairy tales or Australian aboriginal tales or the Hopi creation myths.
I suspect there are more Christians alive today claiming to believe the literal truth of Genesis than there were Jews who believed it when Genesis was written down in the first place. Legends are just that: legends.
Personally, I prefer to believe that human beings are the offspring of the Son of God and a female bear (the Korean creation myth). It makes at least as much sense.
Assertions that these "dinosaur" "fossils" are really the bones of early species are just a con. The Universe was created approximately 6000 years ago and these so-called fossils were placed in the earth by God to test our faith. He's trying to find out if we can be tricked into using those tools of Satan, logic and evidence.
Good Creationists could call the Las Vegas police and have this auction of fraudulent material shut down for making false claims about the age of the items for sale.
Little kids can now build telescopes better than Galileo made and at far less cost using off-the-shelf components. So what? Do we hand them big prizes for it?
A computer controlled VTVL rocket vehicle built by a bunch of amateurs? No, we didn't see that.
Is that what this prize is about? Rewarding people for being amateurs, rather than advances in actual technology?
The LM landed and it took off again, vertically. It was controlled by hand, but computer control is hardly, ahem, rocket science nowadays.
I don't see the point. Why not give prizes for major advances regardless of who achieves them, rather than duplicating 40-year-old achievements with the benefit of hindsight and modern technology?
Next there'll be a prize to build some kind of circuit that allows us to add binary numbers together. After that we can try to find a way to use steam to pump water out of mines.
Sheesh. At least they might have tried it with Martian conditions instead of lunar ones.
Stories, generally posted by Americans, about UK CCTV schemes are often accompanied by text that states more or less explicitly, "Oh, those freedom-hating Brits! Thank God it doesn't happen here." Yet when the Americans implement even worse systems they (for some reason) don't choose to blame the entire nation for them.
It would be nice if posters could direct their ire to the place where it belongs, namely the people responsible for these policies, rather than the citizenry as a whole.
I'd rather have all the CCTV in the world than giving my entire identity, credit cards and all, to any DHS cocaine addict who happens to need a fix. At least CCTV can't read my passport and credit cards.
Using a gun in the commission of a felony usually gets you extra jail time... and these guys did this for $46,000 worth of gear, which probably has a value of about $3000 with a fence?
If all I'm gonna get is $3000, I might as well... oh, I dunno, WORK for the money and not have the years in jail.
An online education is an education of sorts, but it's not a college education unless you go to a college.
Forget "who you meet" and "the contacts you'll make." Nobody gives a rat's ass about that garbage unless they're "damn glad to meetcha" econ scum headed to business school. Nobody I met in college has anything to do with my current career.
The big problem with online higher education is that you can't have a decent frat party by yourself and the sex is really inferior.
Marxism hasn't been a significant part of British politics since Maggie's day. Wake up and smell the coffee. Blair borrowed from the USA and brought in "greed is good" instead. If anything, that's the dominant paradigm in Westminster, but it has precious little to do with religion. It's about moolah.
As for the "doctrine of equality" -- I guess the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, and the inscription on the Supreme Court building, must really trash your shorts. I don't see how you're going to get around them, though, unless you'd prefer to go back to the old division between nobility and peasantry.
You're right, we should be fair: ALL social conservatives are evil, because they seek to preserve the evils within society and government that progressives wish to remove. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian or otherwise, social conservatism is a pernicious force. It's usually worse when backed up by religious dogma, though, because religious people will always trump reason with what they call "faith."
The equal time laws only applied to those media that used a public resource, the broadcast spectrum, which is regulated by the federal government. I don't want public resources being used to promote one particular point of view or another. I want them to be used for politically neutral purposes -- which the news is SUPPOSED to be.
Your right to free speech does not include a right to use a public resource for the purpose.
If others choose to compete with it, that's their problem.
I'm an American and the BBC is the only source of news in the whole world that I trust. Its reach is truly worldwide and it is required by law to be politically neutral, something the US used to have with its "equal time" rule, but that Clinton cravenly abandoned.
My dad has nothing to do with the cops, but has donated to the Fraternal Order of Police for years. He has their stickers all over the back of his car and their (auxiliary) membership card in his wallet next to his driver's licence. He might get a talking to, but he doesn't get tickets.
Accusing someone of a crime in Times Square is libel. Doing it in a police station is, obviously, protected speech.
As for your paranoid fantasies about the government and the corporations, get over them. With the Internet, cheap printers and video cameras, and print-on-demand publishing it has never been easier to spread your opinion around as much as you like without any restraint whatsoever. That's where the problem lies. Additional freedom has not been accompanied by additional responsibility.
How much respect does theoretical physics get from the public? How much tax money do you think they are willing to vote for research into something called a charmed, strange, or bottom quark?
When it was electrons and mesons and baryons, physics kicked ass and we got nukes 'n' stuff. Now that it sounds like a line of toys for toddlers from Playskool, or worse, Teletubbies, physics has lost all respect. This is why the LHC was built in Europe, of course.
And yes, we do punish people for saying the wrong thing. If I stand up in Times Square and read out classified documents, I can't get away with it on the grounds of free speech. Ditto if I accuse my neighbor of being a prostitute or a burglar. Ditto if I have signed an NDA and violate its terms.
Responsibility is the price of liberty. If you don't like it, go live in Somalia, which has no functioning government, and you really can say anything you like at any time... just as long as the local warlord lets you live.
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The law of defamation varies from state to state in the USA, and is spelled out in the statutes; these are then interpreted by the courts, and the outcomes of lawsuits set precedents.
The Constitution states that all rights not granted to federal government are reserved to the states or to the people, which includes the right to be free from defamation. Different states protect that right in different ways. The Constitution does NOT "force us to accept criticism." It protects freedom of speech in a variety of circumstances, but the courts have long since held that this does not include sanctioning defamation.
Also, the law is different all over Europe, as you really ought to know.
Learn the difference or keep your mouth shut.
Yeah, I really want my school wiring my kid up to some machine without telling me about it or asking my permission. Not.
Let's see, formalized education began with the ancient Egyptians, so we're looking at maybe 5000 years total, and NOW students need heart monitors? Wasteful rubbish. If there's a kid with a heart problem, give HIM the heart monitor.
Tell them you refuse permission. Maybe they'll yank the kid out of PE entirely, which frankly would be best anyway; PE never taught anybody anything useful in its entire existence. Send the kid to study hall instead and make him read Dickens or Shakespeare while other kids are wasting their lives running around with heart monitors on.
Makes about as much sense as debating the literal truth of Grimm's fairy tales or Australian aboriginal tales or the Hopi creation myths.
I suspect there are more Christians alive today claiming to believe the literal truth of Genesis than there were Jews who believed it when Genesis was written down in the first place. Legends are just that: legends.
Personally, I prefer to believe that human beings are the offspring of the Son of God and a female bear (the Korean creation myth). It makes at least as much sense.
Assertions that these "dinosaur" "fossils" are really the bones of early species are just a con. The Universe was created approximately 6000 years ago and these so-called fossils were placed in the earth by God to test our faith. He's trying to find out if we can be tricked into using those tools of Satan, logic and evidence.
Good Creationists could call the Las Vegas police and have this auction of fraudulent material shut down for making false claims about the age of the items for sale.
Little kids can now build telescopes better than Galileo made and at far less cost using off-the-shelf components. So what? Do we hand them big prizes for it?
The "we" is "we, the human race."
A computer controlled VTVL rocket vehicle built by a bunch of amateurs? No, we didn't see that.
Is that what this prize is about? Rewarding people for being amateurs, rather than advances in actual technology?
The LM landed and it took off again, vertically. It was controlled by hand, but computer control is hardly, ahem, rocket science nowadays.
I don't see the point. Why not give prizes for major advances regardless of who achieves them, rather than duplicating 40-year-old achievements with the benefit of hindsight and modern technology?
Like, with slide rules?
Next there'll be a prize to build some kind of circuit that allows us to add binary numbers together. After that we can try to find a way to use steam to pump water out of mines.
Sheesh. At least they might have tried it with Martian conditions instead of lunar ones.
Radiation-proof passport wallet. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom.
Stories, generally posted by Americans, about UK CCTV schemes are often accompanied by text that states more or less explicitly, "Oh, those freedom-hating Brits! Thank God it doesn't happen here." Yet when the Americans implement even worse systems they (for some reason) don't choose to blame the entire nation for them.
It would be nice if posters could direct their ire to the place where it belongs, namely the people responsible for these policies, rather than the citizenry as a whole.
Stainless steel RFID-blocking passport holder: http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/gear/a7a2/
I'd rather have all the CCTV in the world than giving my entire identity, credit cards and all, to any DHS cocaine addict who happens to need a fix. At least CCTV can't read my passport and credit cards.
Using a gun in the commission of a felony usually gets you extra jail time... and these guys did this for $46,000 worth of gear, which probably has a value of about $3000 with a fence?
If all I'm gonna get is $3000, I might as well... oh, I dunno, WORK for the money and not have the years in jail.
RAM + uninterruptible power supply, and you're done. The only thing you need storage for is loading apps and data to begin with.
An online education is an education of sorts, but it's not a college education unless you go to a college.
Forget "who you meet" and "the contacts you'll make." Nobody gives a rat's ass about that garbage unless they're "damn glad to meetcha" econ scum headed to business school. Nobody I met in college has anything to do with my current career.
The big problem with online higher education is that you can't have a decent frat party by yourself and the sex is really inferior.
Marxism hasn't been a significant part of British politics since Maggie's day. Wake up and smell the coffee. Blair borrowed from the USA and brought in "greed is good" instead. If anything, that's the dominant paradigm in Westminster, but it has precious little to do with religion. It's about moolah. As for the "doctrine of equality" -- I guess the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, and the inscription on the Supreme Court building, must really trash your shorts. I don't see how you're going to get around them, though, unless you'd prefer to go back to the old division between nobility and peasantry.
You're right, we should be fair: ALL social conservatives are evil, because they seek to preserve the evils within society and government that progressives wish to remove. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian or otherwise, social conservatism is a pernicious force. It's usually worse when backed up by religious dogma, though, because religious people will always trump reason with what they call "faith."
The equal time laws only applied to those media that used a public resource, the broadcast spectrum, which is regulated by the federal government. I don't want public resources being used to promote one particular point of view or another. I want them to be used for politically neutral purposes -- which the news is SUPPOSED to be.
Your right to free speech does not include a right to use a public resource for the purpose.
If others choose to compete with it, that's their problem.
I'm an American and the BBC is the only source of news in the whole world that I trust. Its reach is truly worldwide and it is required by law to be politically neutral, something the US used to have with its "equal time" rule, but that Clinton cravenly abandoned.
You're right, it's completely backwards. The ESA fights these laws, it doesn't support them.
My dad has nothing to do with the cops, but has donated to the Fraternal Order of Police for years. He has their stickers all over the back of his car and their (auxiliary) membership card in his wallet next to his driver's licence. He might get a talking to, but he doesn't get tickets.
Accusing someone of a crime in Times Square is libel. Doing it in a police station is, obviously, protected speech.
As for your paranoid fantasies about the government and the corporations, get over them. With the Internet, cheap printers and video cameras, and print-on-demand publishing it has never been easier to spread your opinion around as much as you like without any restraint whatsoever. That's where the problem lies. Additional freedom has not been accompanied by additional responsibility.
How much respect does theoretical physics get from the public? How much tax money do you think they are willing to vote for research into something called a charmed, strange, or bottom quark?
When it was electrons and mesons and baryons, physics kicked ass and we got nukes 'n' stuff. Now that it sounds like a line of toys for toddlers from Playskool, or worse, Teletubbies, physics has lost all respect. This is why the LHC was built in Europe, of course.
And yes, we do punish people for saying the wrong thing. If I stand up in Times Square and read out classified documents, I can't get away with it on the grounds of free speech. Ditto if I accuse my neighbor of being a prostitute or a burglar. Ditto if I have signed an NDA and violate its terms.
Responsibility is the price of liberty. If you don't like it, go live in Somalia, which has no functioning government, and you really can say anything you like at any time... just as long as the local warlord lets you live.