As a taxpaying citizen, I strongly oppose any measure to restrict the truthful recounting of anything that resides in the public record.
Including sealed records?
I mean, hey, I know this minor that's in drug court right now for a felony, which is his second conviction. This is all known because it's public record, and I can walk down to the superior court records, and print out the records right now...
Should I publish this information because I believe him to be a hazard to society? Even though, I know that at 18, it would be sealed? What if I obtain the information now, while it's not sealed, then they seal it, and then I publish it after it's sealed?
Look, I'm all for being open and transparent, but it's NOT YOUR BUSINESS to know some of this material, even IF it is public record.
NO. No it is NOT ok. I want my coca-cola, because it's the brand that I like, and I've invented personal private reasons for why I prefer one to the other, but truth be told, if I were given a completely double-blind taste test, I likely couldn't tell the difference.
But all those "facts" get in the way of the truthiness. I drink COKE, and Pepsi is NOT ok.
I don't think you understand what "public record" means. It is a statement of fact that these men committed the crime of murder. You cannot prevent people from publishing this information in any way that reflects a truthful account of it.
Basically, that yes, it is public record, and yes, any particular individual may receive that information, however that does not present them with the right to publish said public record.
When the Supreme Court actually rules about whether it is actually against the law to publish public record or not, when a party may be damaged as a result of such publishing, I'll tell you what US law actually says about this.
So far, the Supreme Court has held that their argument is credible enough to warrant enjoining the publishing of the public record before they can actually make a ruling.
The _murderer's_ rights aren't violated by people knowing what they did. They should have been executed anyways. But irrelevant of that, non-aggressive people also have the right of freedom of association. I for one choose not to associate with people I consider dangerous.
Most countries in the world do not hold to the barbaric idea of execution. We are supposed to be more moral than animals.
In a free society, criminals would owe restitution to their victims, and victims would be also entitled to request retribution against the criminal. Then people at large could make their own associative or dis-associative decisions regarding the criminal.
They paid their restitution, the victims likely requested their desired restitution, and you can associate or not with people in general, but people need not actively tell you that they committed a crime, or necessarily any other sort of information. In a free society, we have the right to disclose personal details at our own discretion... some details will be worn on our face... the color of our skin, our gender, etc... but in general, we should have our privacy to tell only the details that we wish to.
You're still free to choose not to associate with ex-criminals... but how many of them do you really know? I suppose more people than you would expect have had criminal run-ins... especially if you live in the USA.
One thing is clear, however. It doesn't violate anyone's rights for other people to know information about them that they've made publicly available through their actions.
Note that I'm not saying I have, per se, the right to know information about other people. That would imply positive obligations on the part of other people. However, no-one has the right to stop the various people at Wikipedia from recording and maintaining an account of history.
People have a right to privacy. The USA has "false light" laws as well as defamation laws. Sometimes, even if information is true, if it is presented with actual malice, it is wrong, and the individual is entitled to damages.
That is their private property right.
You seem to misunderstand what prompts rights. A government grants the rights of their citizens to their citizens. There is not some omnipotent higher-power that brings his hand down to personally interfere with human legal machinations.
Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor in 1990. Now that they are out of prison...
So basically in Germany, if I really really dislike someone, I can say "hmmm for a mere 20 years of my life I can take X amount of years of theirs, after giving them a gruesome and painful death". Seems like stupid logic to people who have a lot to live for, but for people that don't... I'm sure these two are giving each other high fives and declaring themselves the winner.
And this isn't the difference between "murder" and "accidental killing" here, they murdered this guy, and it was a hate crime. The victim was a gay actor. They then mutilated his body.
You do realize that not ever murder in America is punished with death, or life in prison. In fact, in the USA, death and life in prison are pretty much only allowable for murder that was premeditated, which I don't imagine that this case was.
In theory right, but in this case you have to weigh the interests. These people committed a crime, did their time and now they are free again. They should be given a chance to reintegrate into society. At least in Germany the idea behind prison is to "better" the person, not just revenge and punishment. And this can be severely hindered if the first thing you find when you look for his name is that he's shot someone. Wikipedia has a tendency to come up as the first hit for any given keyword you might be looking for.
Most Americans have been socialized in a culture of punishment, not rehabilitation. It is difficult to try to get us to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of "BUT HE NEEDS TO BE PUNISHED!" It's precisely why we imprison so much of our society.
No. That includes me. I don't care if it's me, my brother, my father, my mother, or anyone else I care deeply about. A conviction is a conviction; it's part of the public record and should not be suppressed.
Just because it's public record does not mean that it's necessarily ok to invade their privacy over the issue, and push the information to a larger number of people than would otherwise know.
You might argue that it's a public concern that someone was convicted of crime XY, but really, unless it's something with high repeat offense, there isn't really a reason for disclosing it wider than need be.
Face it, the person bagging your groceries? It really doesn't matter to you that they did time in jail for having killed a friend in a fit of rage, because his friend was sleeping with his wife.
Of course the whole thing here, is that the US focuses on PUNISHING people, while Europe in general focuses on REHABILITATING people.
You miss the point and your analogy is flawed. There's nothing intrinsic to a black person that makes serving them more difficult than serving white people. Discriminating on that basis would be a preference alone and therefore unreasonable. But blind people have different requirements than sighted people. The game must function differently, perhaps in fundamental ways. The game may make use of elements that specifically require vision to be meaningful. It is not unreasonable discrimination, then, for a game to have elements which are not accessible to people of disabilities. This is not discriminatory, unless the elements are placed there only to prevent, e.g., blind people from being able to make effective use of the game. I daresay that's the problem.
World of Warcraft changed the way it showed monetary values in the game, because their original version resulted in color blind people confusing bronze with gold, and thus repeatedly being ripped off.
They had to change the game.
Also, websites in general have to be blind-accessible. There are a lot of things that one can do to enable ease of access that do not change the game fundamentally.
COULD a designer make a fundamental change to the game to make it easier for blind people? Well, yes, they could... but no one is asking for that. They're asking for MODEST changes... like making trade screens large enough to see for the visually impaired.
If their program actively rejects 3rd party helpers, like screen readers, then they need to ensure that they do not interfere with reasonable 3rd party mods like screen readers.
Seriously, everyone jumps on this "it's a video game!!!" bandwagon, but they fail to realize that blind people are accustomed to dealing with a world full of sighted people, and they have different ways of coping. If a program prevents those coping methods, then...
fuck it, whatever.. they're blind fuck them all. Why do I even try to argue human dignity with people on the internet?
Why are game companies, or any companies for that matter, required to make every product accessible? I can understand government services, both because of their purpose but also because of the fact that they are paid for by public money (and generally don't actually need to be un-accessible), but products of corporations? If this guy wants to complain to the company and then not buy their products, fine. In fact, that's really the best way to deal with the issue.
Right... why should a restaurant be forced to serve black customers? Or hotels rent to asians. I mean, if that's the way the companies want to be, then don't go to them in the first place... I mean, you're totally not wanted, so why go there anyways? What kind of black person would want to stay at a hotel run by some bigot anyways?
I mean, it's not like the black person just wants some dignity and to be treated like a human being.
I'm right there with you, screw all these people expecting hand outs. If you want something done, then do it yourself. That's the American way!!!
You know what, too? I say, let's do the same thing to abortions... why do we need all these whiney people complaining that we're killing babies? Let's do it the right way, and if that baby doesn't want to be aborted, then they can defend themselves. Hell, let it kind of hold up in perpetuity... if you can kill your kid, then too f-ing bad for them, maybe they should have spent less time crying for someone for protection and help, and more time defending themselves.
That's the only American way to solve the problem. Lord knows that when I lose the use of both of my legs because my parents stabbed me in my back paralyzing me, that I will haul myself up by my own bootstraps if I have to, up the stairs of our court house to sue the f-k out of them. HOOOOOOOWAH!!!!
Those handicapped parking spaces which are on private property are a direct result of the ADA. Notice the lack of door knobs in public buildings being replaced with those lever things? ADA. Two water fountains, one very, very close to the ground? ADA.
Ok, I've heard the handicap parking space thing, and yeah, a lot of douche people exploit that system, so I'm not going to touch that one, but... the other two? You're going to complain about THOSE?!
Ok, so, the doorknob thing is idiotic, because fire codes and other stuff already require doors to open towards the outside and have panic bars... so, protecting people from fires is ok, but telling people that they have to use an accessible style doorknob that costs the same price as a turn door knob is wrong?
And are you SERIOUSLY going to complain about lowered water fountains? SERIOUSLY?! That just tells me that you're a douche... seriously... I mean, that bastard guberment already requires that if a place accommodates the public that they cannot refuse to serve blacks just because they're black, and quite a few other things. A hotel cannot refuse a room to someone just because they're black.
Now, you may not think that mandating panic bars and rentals to blacks are a bad thing, but yeah... so is giving water fountains that a person in a wheelchair can get to!
Uh...... hate to break it to you, but that chart is wrong. In at least the US, on-Demand abortions come with severe restrictions. Notably, they don't happen after the third-trimester.
Ok, as a girl, reading this the glaring point that needs to be made is... ALL abortions are illegal after the third trimester... because that means that the baby has been born.
You mean that on-demand abortions aren't allowed DURING the third trimester.
Again, it's possible to mistake heartburn and cracked ribs for a heart attack. Maybe you should see what the symptoms are before you blow $300 at the Emergency Room.
Thank god I saved that $300 Emergency Room visit (wtf country are you in, in the USA it's more than that just to walk in the door)
All I had was cracked ribs! Now that I know, I don't need to visit the ER.
There are two things that if you think you're having, GO TO THE ER, even though it might be something minimal, you are far better off being sure, because if you're wrong, then every second counts. The first is a heart attack, the second is a stroke. Don't try and figure out if you have one, YOU ARE NOT A TRAINED DOCTOR... instead, if you think it's possible that you're having one, go to the ER.
Wasting $300 is a better bet than losing even 5 minutes if you actually are. It's like Pascal's Wager, only without infinite gain/loss... ok, well, the 5 minutes might cause you infinite loss in this physical world, so betting against that is typically the best thing one can ever do.
According to Wikipedia (take with grain of salt) she converted to Judaism in 1998, and then apparently in 2003, she rejected her Orthodox Judaism. So, she was an Orthodox Jew for all of like... 5 years.
Which is obvious because if she attempted to apply Jewish law to non-Jews, she's an idiot Jew. Jews have 613 Mitzvot to follow, but non-Jews only have 7 laws, and it is not the duty of the Jews to enforce those laws.
Next, learned Orthodox Jews are essentially lawyers of their own Mitzvoh, and can tell you three things about homosexual Jews: a) they are proscribed by law, b) they are to be put to death c) as long as their temple remains destroyed no death penalties may be actually given.
So, in summary, even though an Orthodox Jew should say that homosexuality is wrong, they should qualify it with: "for Jews, and even then, we cannot put them to death, because the temple does not stand." Depending on one's take of the Noahide Laws it may proscribe homosexuality for all man kind... but again, the Jews are not to enforce any laws upon anyone who is not Jewish... except in the Jewish state (Israel, or Judah, and even then, the death sentence cannot be carried out without their temple).
Orthodox Jews still take the attitude of a separation of our secular government from their religious law... it's why you typically don't see any groups of Orthodox Jews campaigning as hard against homosexual marriage like you do Mormon (Prop 8 in CA), or Romain Catholic.(Prop 1 in ME)
You're not actually supposed to clean your inner ear. Your outer ear, yes, but putting crap inside your ear is stupid, and can seriously damage your hearing.
Your ears have natural mechanisms for removing excess wax.
The outer ear is all of the visible ear right down to the eardrum. The inner ear is the part with the sensory nerves. The middle ear is between the two.
You're flat wrong. Yes, the ear does have a mechanism for removing wax, but not excess wax - it can and does build up beyond the capacity for it to be removed naturally and has to be removed or softened.
You're quite right. As I entering the phase where I'm supposed to start speaking, my parents kept being told from my doctors, "wow, she has a lot of wax in her ear." But the doctor wouldn't do anything. Meanwhile, my vocabulary for vehicles was "car" for small vehicles, and "caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar" for big vehicles. Not too unusual, kids are weird like that sometimes... even if my language skills were lagging just a bit.
Well, finally, my parents took me to a doctor who sucked out the excessive earwax, and within a week or so I was using the word "truck". Turns out the wax was so bad, I couldn't even hear properly.
A bunch of years later, I'm using a q-tip after a shower, and a huge glob of earwax literally falls out of one of my ears... then a week or so later, out of the other ear. Now, I'm a little paranoid about excessive ear wax, and expect huge globs to fall out occasionally, but that hasn't happened so far.
The people who need to make sure to get everything secure in order to for the web to function have waited longer than -9 weeks- to get something fixed? When the thing was presented at... Defcon? What else do these people have to do other than fix these -major- flaws. When something is shown at Defcon, BlackHat, HOPE or any other major security conference, the first thing for these people to do would be to fix the flaw. 9 weeks is inexcusable.
Don't worry, I'm sure this bug is on their SCRUM backlog...
I'm aware of the forfeiting of POW protections. That's why I said, "with no reason." Surprisingly, while an escaping POW may be shot, some countries actually impose a duty to escape, in fact it's specifically written that a soldier should attempt to escape whenever possible.
The third point you raise actually can be considered legal, as the Geneva Convention allows an out for people who violate the convention. That is, that when fighting against an enemy that does not adhere to the Geneva Convention one need not necessarily be bound by the Geneva Convention if doing so would be excessively disadvantagous.
Indeed, ever notice how such a big deal is made over "civilian" casualties, but soldiers, they almost don't even count. Oh well, 10k soldiers died, but HOLY MOLY! You killed a CIVILIAN!!!
I think I'd make just as bad a soldier as you.
Actually, I'm cool with the differences between civilian and military deaths. Thing is that there are certain people who have consented by Geneva Convention to risk their life in military conflicts. It's the same as boxing. I don't get sad when two boxers fight, and one of them gets beat up. I don't get upset when a football player gets tackled in a football match in a fair play.
I do get upset when a boxer chews another's ear off, because that's not what the other person consented to, and I do get upset if a football player is injured outside of the rules of play.
The whole issue here is consent to harm. A soldier has consented to harm and death, while a civilian has made no such choice. That's why it's reasonable for us to treat their deaths in combat differently. Now, say a group of soldiers step over the line and kill five prisoners of war for no reason at all... the POWs vacated their consent to be killed indiscriminately by laying down arms... they are thus "protected".
It's a sad thing when any human dies, period... however, some people take explicit consent to involve themselves in dangerous activities that may result in their death. If that choice is made willingly, then such be their choice... free-will and self-determination to me is more important than any presumed "sanctity of life".
I read an interesting piece somewhere about how a truly skeptical physicist should always be looking up when dropping something, because if the object falls down, then it's boring meaningless data, but if the ball falls up... then that's important.
Like you said... we're full of experiments that prove the nonobvious against the obvious. But even more so... we knew that genetic material was passed from parent to offspring for a long time, but when we found DNA, we learned the mechanism.
This research points out the MECHANISM by which something that we know to be obvious works. I find it as fascinating as DNA.
Of course, now I may just be a girl, and thus interested in the mechanics of social interaction... but I can't believe that boy geeks and nerds have been so abjectly turned off to social mechanics that they don't want to learn about how it works. Here we are, a subculture of people who love to pull things apart and see how they work... but we don't want to pull apart the ephemeral and latch it into concrete physiological responses?
I guess that the OP simply thought this should be bleeding obvious to everyone, even without actually doing any research. The alternative/inverse would be that we are as likely to do harm to our beloved/friends as to a complete stranger, and that you "bond" tighter with friends than with strangers.
The Swedish king Karl XI has this figured out already in the 17th century when he organised his forces so that people would fight side-by-side with brothers, cousins and people from the same region as you are from. This improved morale and made people less likely to flee the battlefield as you knew you could depend on, and wanted to support loved ones.
The working into our knowledge is intuitive and obvious... however the actual physiological effect is much more interesting. Explaining WHY and HOW we avoid killing our kinfolk is way cooler than simply knowing that we don't... we've know about that ever since Glug got his first testosterone rush from defending his tribe from Grib.
You know. It's one thing to say that clay tablets are cool because some survived but how many really survived. You're not interested in Hamad's clay tablets with Yak receipts. You're interested in YOUR clay tablets with your awful Vogon poetry on it.
The question isn't can 'some' clay tablets survive 5000 years but will your particular clay tablet survive that long.
Chances are No.
The fact that you probably don't live, work and store your stuff in an arid climate like a desert probably won't help your prospects either.
I dismissed clay tablets... primarily because they would be difficult to reconstruct significant amounts of data from in any sort of efficient manner.
You however do not know the location of where I live. In fact, I grew up in an arid environment. I no longer live there, because I grew tired of the weather.
All cars now also come with seat belts and most people wear them.
I heard an interview question with Ralph Nader at one point, and someone asked him, if he was upset that his legacy might be that he ran for president 8 hojillion times, and never won. He responded, "I put seat belts in cars... My legacy is already set."
I applauded him that day... still didn't nor ever have voted for him, but I must admit, the guy did put seat belts in cars...
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As a taxpaying citizen, I strongly oppose any measure to restrict the truthful recounting of anything that resides in the public record.
Including sealed records?
I mean, hey, I know this minor that's in drug court right now for a felony, which is his second conviction. This is all known because it's public record, and I can walk down to the superior court records, and print out the records right now...
Should I publish this information because I believe him to be a hazard to society? Even though, I know that at 18, it would be sealed? What if I obtain the information now, while it's not sealed, then they seal it, and then I publish it after it's sealed?
Look, I'm all for being open and transparent, but it's NOT YOUR BUSINESS to know some of this material, even IF it is public record.
NO. No it is NOT ok. I want my coca-cola, because it's the brand that I like, and I've invented personal private reasons for why I prefer one to the other, but truth be told, if I were given a completely double-blind taste test, I likely couldn't tell the difference.
But all those "facts" get in the way of the truthiness. I drink COKE, and Pepsi is NOT ok.
I don't think you understand what "public record" means. It is a statement of fact that these men committed the crime of murder. You cannot prevent people from publishing this information in any way that reflects a truthful account of it.
Perhaps you're not aware that Protect Marriage Washington is arguing just such a thing before the Supreme Court.
Basically, that yes, it is public record, and yes, any particular individual may receive that information, however that does not present them with the right to publish said public record.
When the Supreme Court actually rules about whether it is actually against the law to publish public record or not, when a party may be damaged as a result of such publishing, I'll tell you what US law actually says about this.
So far, the Supreme Court has held that their argument is credible enough to warrant enjoining the publishing of the public record before they can actually make a ruling.
The _murderer's_ rights aren't violated by people knowing what they did. They should have been executed anyways. But irrelevant of that, non-aggressive people also have the right of freedom of association. I for one choose not to associate with people I consider dangerous.
Most countries in the world do not hold to the barbaric idea of execution. We are supposed to be more moral than animals.
In a free society, criminals would owe restitution to their victims, and victims would be also entitled to request retribution against the criminal. Then people at large could make their own associative or dis-associative decisions regarding the criminal.
They paid their restitution, the victims likely requested their desired restitution, and you can associate or not with people in general, but people need not actively tell you that they committed a crime, or necessarily any other sort of information. In a free society, we have the right to disclose personal details at our own discretion... some details will be worn on our face... the color of our skin, our gender, etc... but in general, we should have our privacy to tell only the details that we wish to.
You're still free to choose not to associate with ex-criminals... but how many of them do you really know? I suppose more people than you would expect have had criminal run-ins... especially if you live in the USA.
One thing is clear, however. It doesn't violate anyone's rights for other people to know information about them that they've made publicly available through their actions.
Note that I'm not saying I have, per se, the right to know information about other people. That would imply positive obligations on the part of other people. However, no-one has the right to stop the various people at Wikipedia from recording and maintaining an account of history.
People have a right to privacy. The USA has "false light" laws as well as defamation laws. Sometimes, even if information is true, if it is presented with actual malice, it is wrong, and the individual is entitled to damages.
That is their private property right.
You seem to misunderstand what prompts rights. A government grants the rights of their citizens to their citizens. There is not some omnipotent higher-power that brings his hand down to personally interfere with human legal machinations.
So basically in Germany, if I really really dislike someone, I can say "hmmm for a mere 20 years of my life I can take X amount of years of theirs, after giving them a gruesome and painful death". Seems like stupid logic to people who have a lot to live for, but for people that don't... I'm sure these two are giving each other high fives and declaring themselves the winner.
And this isn't the difference between "murder" and "accidental killing" here, they murdered this guy, and it was a hate crime. The victim was a gay actor. They then mutilated his body.
You do realize that not ever murder in America is punished with death, or life in prison. In fact, in the USA, death and life in prison are pretty much only allowable for murder that was premeditated, which I don't imagine that this case was.
In theory right, but in this case you have to weigh the interests. These people committed a crime, did their time and now they are free again. They should be given a chance to reintegrate into society. At least in Germany the idea behind prison is to "better" the person, not just revenge and punishment. And this can be severely hindered if the first thing you find when you look for his name is that he's shot someone. Wikipedia has a tendency to come up as the first hit for any given keyword you might be looking for.
Most Americans have been socialized in a culture of punishment, not rehabilitation. It is difficult to try to get us to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of "BUT HE NEEDS TO BE PUNISHED!" It's precisely why we imprison so much of our society.
No. That includes me. I don't care if it's me, my brother, my father, my mother, or anyone else I care deeply about. A conviction is a conviction; it's part of the public record and should not be suppressed.
Just because it's public record does not mean that it's necessarily ok to invade their privacy over the issue, and push the information to a larger number of people than would otherwise know.
You might argue that it's a public concern that someone was convicted of crime XY, but really, unless it's something with high repeat offense, there isn't really a reason for disclosing it wider than need be.
Face it, the person bagging your groceries? It really doesn't matter to you that they did time in jail for having killed a friend in a fit of rage, because his friend was sleeping with his wife.
Of course the whole thing here, is that the US focuses on PUNISHING people, while Europe in general focuses on REHABILITATING people.
You miss the point and your analogy is flawed. There's nothing intrinsic to a black person that makes serving them more difficult than serving white people. Discriminating on that basis would be a preference alone and therefore unreasonable. But blind people have different requirements than sighted people. The game must function differently, perhaps in fundamental ways. The game may make use of elements that specifically require vision to be meaningful. It is not unreasonable discrimination, then, for a game to have elements which are not accessible to people of disabilities. This is not discriminatory, unless the elements are placed there only to prevent, e.g., blind people from being able to make effective use of the game. I daresay that's the problem.
World of Warcraft changed the way it showed monetary values in the game, because their original version resulted in color blind people confusing bronze with gold, and thus repeatedly being ripped off.
They had to change the game.
Also, websites in general have to be blind-accessible. There are a lot of things that one can do to enable ease of access that do not change the game fundamentally.
COULD a designer make a fundamental change to the game to make it easier for blind people? Well, yes, they could... but no one is asking for that. They're asking for MODEST changes... like making trade screens large enough to see for the visually impaired.
If their program actively rejects 3rd party helpers, like screen readers, then they need to ensure that they do not interfere with reasonable 3rd party mods like screen readers.
Seriously, everyone jumps on this "it's a video game!!!" bandwagon, but they fail to realize that blind people are accustomed to dealing with a world full of sighted people, and they have different ways of coping. If a program prevents those coping methods, then ...
fuck it, whatever.. they're blind fuck them all. Why do I even try to argue human dignity with people on the internet?
Why are game companies, or any companies for that matter, required to make every product accessible? I can understand government services, both because of their purpose but also because of the fact that they are paid for by public money (and generally don't actually need to be un-accessible), but products of corporations? If this guy wants to complain to the company and then not buy their products, fine. In fact, that's really the best way to deal with the issue.
Right... why should a restaurant be forced to serve black customers? Or hotels rent to asians. I mean, if that's the way the companies want to be, then don't go to them in the first place... I mean, you're totally not wanted, so why go there anyways? What kind of black person would want to stay at a hotel run by some bigot anyways?
I mean, it's not like the black person just wants some dignity and to be treated like a human being.
I'm right there with you, screw all these people expecting hand outs. If you want something done, then do it yourself. That's the American way!!!
You know what, too? I say, let's do the same thing to abortions... why do we need all these whiney people complaining that we're killing babies? Let's do it the right way, and if that baby doesn't want to be aborted, then they can defend themselves. Hell, let it kind of hold up in perpetuity... if you can kill your kid, then too f-ing bad for them, maybe they should have spent less time crying for someone for protection and help, and more time defending themselves.
That's the only American way to solve the problem. Lord knows that when I lose the use of both of my legs because my parents stabbed me in my back paralyzing me, that I will haul myself up by my own bootstraps if I have to, up the stairs of our court house to sue the f-k out of them. HOOOOOOOWAH!!!!
Those handicapped parking spaces which are on private property are a direct result of the ADA. Notice the lack of door knobs in public buildings being replaced with those lever things? ADA. Two water fountains, one very, very close to the ground? ADA.
Ok, I've heard the handicap parking space thing, and yeah, a lot of douche people exploit that system, so I'm not going to touch that one, but... the other two? You're going to complain about THOSE?!
Ok, so, the doorknob thing is idiotic, because fire codes and other stuff already require doors to open towards the outside and have panic bars... so, protecting people from fires is ok, but telling people that they have to use an accessible style doorknob that costs the same price as a turn door knob is wrong?
And are you SERIOUSLY going to complain about lowered water fountains? SERIOUSLY?! That just tells me that you're a douche... seriously... I mean, that bastard guberment already requires that if a place accommodates the public that they cannot refuse to serve blacks just because they're black, and quite a few other things. A hotel cannot refuse a room to someone just because they're black.
Now, you may not think that mandating panic bars and rentals to blacks are a bad thing, but yeah... so is giving water fountains that a person in a wheelchair can get to!
Uh...... hate to break it to you, but that chart is wrong. In at least the US, on-Demand abortions come with severe restrictions. Notably, they don't happen after the third-trimester.
Ok, as a girl, reading this the glaring point that needs to be made is... ALL abortions are illegal after the third trimester... because that means that the baby has been born.
You mean that on-demand abortions aren't allowed DURING the third trimester.
Am I having a heart attack?
Again, it's possible to mistake heartburn and cracked ribs for a heart attack. Maybe you should see what the symptoms are before you blow $300 at the Emergency Room.
Thank god I saved that $300 Emergency Room visit (wtf country are you in, in the USA it's more than that just to walk in the door)
All I had was cracked ribs! Now that I know, I don't need to visit the ER.
There are two things that if you think you're having, GO TO THE ER, even though it might be something minimal, you are far better off being sure, because if you're wrong, then every second counts. The first is a heart attack, the second is a stroke. Don't try and figure out if you have one, YOU ARE NOT A TRAINED DOCTOR... instead, if you think it's possible that you're having one, go to the ER.
Wasting $300 is a better bet than losing even 5 minutes if you actually are. It's like Pascal's Wager, only without infinite gain/loss... ok, well, the 5 minutes might cause you infinite loss in this physical world, so betting against that is typically the best thing one can ever do.
According to Wikipedia (take with grain of salt) she converted to Judaism in 1998, and then apparently in 2003, she rejected her Orthodox Judaism. So, she was an Orthodox Jew for all of like... 5 years.
Which is obvious because if she attempted to apply Jewish law to non-Jews, she's an idiot Jew. Jews have 613 Mitzvot to follow, but non-Jews only have 7 laws, and it is not the duty of the Jews to enforce those laws.
Next, learned Orthodox Jews are essentially lawyers of their own Mitzvoh, and can tell you three things about homosexual Jews: a) they are proscribed by law, b) they are to be put to death c) as long as their temple remains destroyed no death penalties may be actually given.
So, in summary, even though an Orthodox Jew should say that homosexuality is wrong, they should qualify it with: "for Jews, and even then, we cannot put them to death, because the temple does not stand." Depending on one's take of the Noahide Laws it may proscribe homosexuality for all man kind... but again, the Jews are not to enforce any laws upon anyone who is not Jewish... except in the Jewish state (Israel, or Judah, and even then, the death sentence cannot be carried out without their temple).
Orthodox Jews still take the attitude of a separation of our secular government from their religious law... it's why you typically don't see any groups of Orthodox Jews campaigning as hard against homosexual marriage like you do Mormon (Prop 8 in CA), or Romain Catholic.(Prop 1 in ME)
You're not actually supposed to clean your inner ear. Your outer ear, yes, but putting crap inside your ear is stupid, and can seriously damage your hearing.
Your ears have natural mechanisms for removing excess wax.
The outer ear is all of the visible ear right down to the eardrum. The inner ear is the part with the sensory nerves. The middle ear is between the two.
You're flat wrong. Yes, the ear does have a mechanism for removing wax, but not excess wax - it can and does build up beyond the capacity for it to be removed naturally and has to be removed or softened.
You're quite right. As I entering the phase where I'm supposed to start speaking, my parents kept being told from my doctors, "wow, she has a lot of wax in her ear." But the doctor wouldn't do anything. Meanwhile, my vocabulary for vehicles was "car" for small vehicles, and "caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar" for big vehicles. Not too unusual, kids are weird like that sometimes... even if my language skills were lagging just a bit.
Well, finally, my parents took me to a doctor who sucked out the excessive earwax, and within a week or so I was using the word "truck". Turns out the wax was so bad, I couldn't even hear properly.
A bunch of years later, I'm using a q-tip after a shower, and a huge glob of earwax literally falls out of one of my ears... then a week or so later, out of the other ear. Now, I'm a little paranoid about excessive ear wax, and expect huge globs to fall out occasionally, but that hasn't happened so far.
The people who need to make sure to get everything secure in order to for the web to function have waited longer than -9 weeks- to get something fixed? When the thing was presented at... Defcon? What else do these people have to do other than fix these -major- flaws. When something is shown at Defcon, BlackHat, HOPE or any other major security conference, the first thing for these people to do would be to fix the flaw. 9 weeks is inexcusable.
Don't worry, I'm sure this bug is on their SCRUM backlog...
I'm aware of the forfeiting of POW protections. That's why I said, "with no reason." Surprisingly, while an escaping POW may be shot, some countries actually impose a duty to escape, in fact it's specifically written that a soldier should attempt to escape whenever possible.
The third point you raise actually can be considered legal, as the Geneva Convention allows an out for people who violate the convention. That is, that when fighting against an enemy that does not adhere to the Geneva Convention one need not necessarily be bound by the Geneva Convention if doing so would be excessively disadvantagous.
Indeed, ever notice how such a big deal is made over "civilian" casualties, but soldiers, they almost don't even count. Oh well, 10k soldiers died, but HOLY MOLY! You killed a CIVILIAN!!!
I think I'd make just as bad a soldier as you.
Actually, I'm cool with the differences between civilian and military deaths. Thing is that there are certain people who have consented by Geneva Convention to risk their life in military conflicts. It's the same as boxing. I don't get sad when two boxers fight, and one of them gets beat up. I don't get upset when a football player gets tackled in a football match in a fair play.
I do get upset when a boxer chews another's ear off, because that's not what the other person consented to, and I do get upset if a football player is injured outside of the rules of play.
The whole issue here is consent to harm. A soldier has consented to harm and death, while a civilian has made no such choice. That's why it's reasonable for us to treat their deaths in combat differently. Now, say a group of soldiers step over the line and kill five prisoners of war for no reason at all... the POWs vacated their consent to be killed indiscriminately by laying down arms... they are thus "protected".
It's a sad thing when any human dies, period... however, some people take explicit consent to involve themselves in dangerous activities that may result in their death. If that choice is made willingly, then such be their choice... free-will and self-determination to me is more important than any presumed "sanctity of life".
I read an interesting piece somewhere about how a truly skeptical physicist should always be looking up when dropping something, because if the object falls down, then it's boring meaningless data, but if the ball falls up... then that's important.
Like you said... we're full of experiments that prove the nonobvious against the obvious. But even more so... we knew that genetic material was passed from parent to offspring for a long time, but when we found DNA, we learned the mechanism.
This research points out the MECHANISM by which something that we know to be obvious works. I find it as fascinating as DNA.
Of course, now I may just be a girl, and thus interested in the mechanics of social interaction... but I can't believe that boy geeks and nerds have been so abjectly turned off to social mechanics that they don't want to learn about how it works. Here we are, a subculture of people who love to pull things apart and see how they work... but we don't want to pull apart the ephemeral and latch it into concrete physiological responses?
That seems anathema to me...
I guess that the OP simply thought this should be bleeding obvious to everyone, even without actually doing any research. The alternative/inverse would be that we are as likely to do harm to our beloved/friends as to a complete stranger, and that you "bond" tighter with friends than with strangers.
The Swedish king Karl XI has this figured out already in the 17th century when he organised his forces so that people would fight side-by-side with brothers, cousins and people from the same region as you are from. This improved morale and made people less likely to flee the battlefield as you knew you could depend on, and wanted to support loved ones.
The working into our knowledge is intuitive and obvious... however the actual physiological effect is much more interesting. Explaining WHY and HOW we avoid killing our kinfolk is way cooler than simply knowing that we don't... we've know about that ever since Glug got his first testosterone rush from defending his tribe from Grib.
You know. It's one thing to say that clay tablets are cool because some
survived but how many really survived. You're not interested in Hamad's
clay tablets with Yak receipts. You're interested in YOUR clay tablets
with your awful Vogon poetry on it.
The question isn't can 'some' clay tablets survive 5000 years but will
your particular clay tablet survive that long.
Chances are No.
The fact that you probably don't live, work and store your stuff in
an arid climate like a desert probably won't help your prospects either.
I dismissed clay tablets... primarily because they would be difficult to reconstruct significant amounts of data from in any sort of efficient manner.
You however do not know the location of where I live. In fact, I grew up in an arid environment. I no longer live there, because I grew tired of the weather.
Go for the storage solution with a proven track record: clay tablets!
You laugh... but honestly, I think a barebones ROM chip actually would work pretty reasonably well for what he's trying to do.
Nothing stores ones and zeros better than raw conductors.
>("Ma'am, this is super really big important, are you SURE you're not pregnant?")
We're dying to know how the baby ended up.
He's a radioactive superhero, who goes around saving people, who then mysteriously die from radiation poisoning...
It's the funniest thing...
Top Gear tries to stay away from useful facts and info as much as possible.
And the idea of Top Gear having TWO cars that cost below $40,000 on the screen at the same is pretty far fetched.
Perhaps you missed the series: "Destroying a Toyota Pickup"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrk6vsb77xk
All cars now also come with seat belts and most people wear them.
I heard an interview question with Ralph Nader at one point, and someone asked him, if he was upset that his legacy might be that he ran for president 8 hojillion times, and never won. He responded, "I put seat belts in cars... My legacy is already set."
I applauded him that day... still didn't nor ever have voted for him, but I must admit, the guy did put seat belts in cars...