champu

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.... hate-cake..... This guy's troll-fu is seriously weak. He should have gone for a Muhammad-cartoon cake.

Sounds like a useful tool... but police can get a search warrant or they can cram it. Given the past rulings on thermal imaging and drug dogs used on homes I don't see the use of these things holding up. It's sad we have to play Green eggs and Ham with the courts though to explain to them each and every way they're not to search homes without a warrant.

What black people may think about Al Sharpton (and other things, overall an interesting read): http://www.rljcompanies.com/phpages/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Results-of-a-National-Opinion-Poll-Conducted-by-Zogby-Analytics-Black-Opinions-in-the-Age-of-Obama_2013.pdf Spoiler: a majority don't think Al Sharpton speaks for them.

Agreed. You'd like to imagine the discussions that went on between politicians of opposing parties were more mature and measured than, say, youtube comments, but it gets more difficult all the time. I think it's worth posting this again: http://xkcd.com/1127/

That reminds me of the exchange in My Blue Heaven... Barnie: "You tip a flight attendant?" Vinnie: "I tip everybody, That's my philosophy. Actually, it's not tipping I believe in, it's overtipping."

That was odd... some sort of "Texas role-playing" maybe? Pretty stupid imo.

Sigh... Looks like Mike Honda is going after this at the national level now and is apparently going to try to ban blocks of aluminum, springs, and metal pins while he's at it. That 'ought to be fun. I particularly like the part of 376 where he intends to make it illegal to market or advertise blocks of aluminum, springs, and metal pins in any electronic medium. ...can't wait for the text of the bills to come out...

I'll try and help as his post was both wrong and confusing, but honestly not as bad as people are reacting. My post earlier in the thread was poking fun at the people who would predictably jump down his throat over it. First off, the "33%" was an offered guess to his own question regarding how many people believe Al Sharpton's nonsense, but came after his statement about average intelligence, which is the confusing part. As for that guess? Eh, it's probably high. I'd put it at less than 20%. I did a quick search for Al Sharpton popularity polls and he has pretty consistent unfavorable results. The "average intelligence" comment is going to set people off every time though. Intelligence, by just about any measure, is normally distributed. That means (among other things) that most people can't be "slightly above average." More specifically if you take "slightly above average" literally to mean "more than average, but within one standard deviation" then 34% of people fall in that group, hardly "most." If you take "slightly above average" as sarcasm and/or intentional understatement though (i.e. "realistically I think most Americans aren't dumb enough to fall for it.") then suddenly the post isn't that big of a deal.

It was a funny idea but it needed to be shorter and punchier. Also, the random jab at women was unnecessary. Besides, it's the gun control advocates that want the argument to be about "fine if you want muskets, you can have muskets" or whether the 2nd amendment is a relic that needs to be repealed. There's no reason to humor them for being extreme and unreasonable.

Thread derailment in four... three... two...

It all depends on the nature of the mistake, of course, but you're right it's much less personal. People may get fired, companies lose contracts, etc. the whole industry tends to get subjected to another round of "Whitey on the moon" complaints and it becomes harder to fund anything. Also, similarly, it's difficult to draw the public's attention to successes. As an aside, it's funny you mention people following around those tightening bolts and harassing them. You've got quality engineers pretty well pegged.

If you work in the space industry and you make a mistake it tends to garner a lot of publicity.

Thanks for supplying the statute. However, it doesn't say "unless it has any legitimate use" it says "as opposed to any legitimate use." That paragraph means "it doesn't matter how good your explanation for having the object is if there is any evidence it was used for drugs rather than what you claim is its intended purpose." I would be completely fine if that whole section you posted was summarily shitcanned.

No, I think there's still something interesting in there... The information age has made people's voices louder such that they can be heard nearly around the world... but you still have to type the address into the address bar and/or click the link yourself. The idea of anything accessed via the internet being described as "in your face" or compared to a loud mouth standing on a table at a bar is peculiar. I know Charlie Hebdo is a print rag, which I suppose makes it a bit more in your face if it's all over newsstands, but I don't think you can really dispute who took it to who.

I agree that the 24 hour news cycle and almost certain litigation against the department, the officer, or both makes the PIO's job incredibly difficult. It's a shame it's so difficult to come out and say, "Even if we determine the officer didn't violate any policies in the use of deadly force we obviously don't like it when people die so, as always, we're going to review the incident to learn from it and continuously drive down serious and fatal injuries." Things generally don't get better if acknowledging they could means you get eaten by the machine. /edited: its vs. it's

I read that and was initially confused because none of that is a gun. Here's a better article that goes on to explain... This is a good example of what I'm talking about when I say there's no perfect amount of crazy where taking a person's firearms and calling it a day is the appropriate response.

Also, if you have an iPhone 5 and battery issues you should know about this: https://www.apple.com/support/iphone5-battery/ I recently had my battery replaced at no charge under this program. It would be generous to describe what I was experiencing, though, as "poor battery life performance." I would have described it as "The battery percentage indicator generated random numbers until my phone shut down and demanded to be plugged in."

I think something that PIOs could do, or maybe just do better, in the "leading and bleeding" news stories is to be clear what a determination that a shooting was justified means, and what it does not mean. If the event will be studied, if the policies that were all followed (hence the "justified" determination) are to be reviewed, etc. then the PIO needs to do what they can to make that the conversation. I think the media always wants to make it about "is this cop's head gonna roll or not" and then when the answer is most always "no" people think that's the end of it unless they go out and do something terrible like what happened in New York.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that the outcome was unsurprising. I understand how cause and effect works. What I am arguing is that a predictable outcome is not sufficient to transfer or share "blame" or "fault" or whatever you want to call it. The critical link in the chain of events is the one where Islamists interpret insult as being in the same bucket as a physical attack. This is why an insult of their profit is met with murder. This is a link that absolutely no one is required to respect. This is a link whose existence is entirely within the minds of those who espouse it. It is a "blame diode" in any chain of events in which it exists. Here's another analogy for us to chew on (maybe chew apart, I dunno... analogies are seldom perfect.) Suppose I work at a company that makes widgets and, in the course of my job, I find out part of the widget making process is causing massive damage to the environment, but in a way that won't be apparent for a while. I bring it up with management and they tell me to shut up if I know what's good for me. I take the issue to the press and, in return, the company fires me, pulls strings to have me harassed by landlords, etc. and generally tries to run my name into the ground to destroy my credibility. It wouldn't have been that difficult to predict that would happen, hell they told me to shut up if I knew what was good for me, but you wouldn't say it was my fault I got run through the mud.

Terrorists are not bears, nor hornets, nor are they gravity. They are people. Rule of law means we hold people accountable for criminal actions no matter how predictable they might be. Dehumanizing your adversary with analogies like this isn't helpful. The whole of the entire world is not Compton, nor Harlem, nor Mecca. Charlie Hebdo did not "go somewhere and yell obscenities" and get what was coming to them. Terrorists came to them (a place where you're legally allowed to say the things they said) and enforced rules that no one is interested in abiding by (formally or informally.)

Sunday, Monday, happy days, Tuesday, Wednesday, happy days...

When you place insult in the same playing field as a physical attack and you place a god before yourself and family you end up espousing an eye for an idol.

Posting to dropzone using an iPhone is like slamming your hand in a door except without the immediate benefits.

Based on these last few responses I think I'll watch it when I get a chance. If I can pick out any things I think might be causing the friction I'll share.