GeorgiaDon

Well since I, like everyone else, do not enjoy paying taxes, I would prefer something south of 40%. Having come here from Canada, and having lived in Europe, I also appreciate that Americans are taxed less than anyone else in the developed world, but in general they do not enjoy a better standard of living despite that. As a general principle, I am happy to pay taxes that go towards providing services that I (and pretty much everyone else) need, and that would cost more if I had to go out and buy those services privately. I, and the rest of the country, need some degree of protection from countries that would come and take our resources if we were undefended, so I pay taxes to support the military as it would be prohibitively expensive for me to hire, train, and equip an effective private army. On the other hand, I think the military has become far larger than what we need for defense, which is expensive in its own right and also encourages very expensive military adventurism, and I dislike paying for that. Others obviously disagree. I happily pay taxes, and a little more for products, to have reasonable confidence that the food I eat, the water I drink, the prescription drugs I need to treat sickness, aren't going to kill or disable me. It would be prohibitively expensive, indeed completely unworkable, to have to pay for lab testing of every steak before I could eat it, and having my estate sue the producer after I am dead of food poisoning doesn't do me any good. It's cheaper to pay for food inspectors to enforce safety regulations, and it doesn't bother me in the least that those regulations may restrict the freedom of producers to carry on their business in whatever way they deem most profitable. I don't mind supporting public education, partly for moral reasons but also because I recognize that I receive multiple benefits including my own past education, a crime rate that is lower that it otherwise would be, a stronger economy that generates more overall wealth than would be the case, and access to better professional services (doctors, lawyers, etc) than would be the case if only children of rich families could be prepared to study for those professions. I don't mind paying for facilities to treat the mentally ill, as that is preferable to having to worry about being stabbed nearly to death by a paranoid schizophrenic while shopping for groceries, as recently happened to a friend of my wife. Unlike some who post here, I also recognize that there are things that "cost" me, just not directly in $$, and to some extent I am happy to pay to avoid those costs. It does not cost me money, and it doesn't affect me directly, when I read in the news about children being harmed or even killed in abusive home situations, but it causes me distress so I agree to pay for child protective services. Some would say just don't read the news, ignore it, it's not my problem. I say there is a cost to be paid for ignoring such problems, even if that cost is "just" a general coarsening and indifference to human suffering. What are those things worth to you? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

No problem at all with encouraging a strong work ethic. I work 60-70 hrs/wk at my "real" job, and another 20+ running a small farm. Getting an education is also hard work, and a more appropriate job for young people that picking cotton is, even if their parents don't happen to have the money to send them to a for-profit private school. It may be a better investment (for society), in the long run, to help people with access to medical care so they can get healthy enough to work, instead of favoring a situation that results in a treatable sickness becoming a chronic condition that leaves the patient unable to work. None of that has anything to do with the healthy adult who just prefers to sit around and suck from the public teat, but especially after the welfare reforms passed in the Clinton administration, I believe those people are a small (but infuriating) fraction of the population. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

And people who made their living selling cigarettes were happy to believe them too. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I am proud of this country. Proud enough to have become a citizen, by my own choice, about a year ago. Please don't get the idea that I am completely happy about the current state of affairs in this country. All I have been arguing is that the "pursuit of happiness" is a lot easier if we all pool a small fraction of our resources towards attaining common goals. For example, most people (but judging from SC not all) recognize that we all benefit from a more competitive, vigorous economy that results when the country has an educated work force, and so we pay our taxes to support public education (with a good deal of whining to be sure). Some would say that public education is not in the Constitution, so children should be limited in their education by their parent's ability to pay for private schooling. Of course we did that for many years, indeed up until Reconstruction in the South, with the result that skilled professional jobs were pretty much restricted to the wealthy class. I can't think of a present-day first world market economy that functions with a >50% illiteracy rate, which was the situation we had in this country up until the introduction of public education. In addition public safety is related to education; the social metric that correlates most strongly with crime rates (comparing community to community) is the school drop-out rate, especially in or before 10th grade [I can't find a link right now, but it makes sense if you think about it.] So you can save some of your $$ by eliminating taxpayer-funded schools if you like, but at the cost of 1) having a much harder time finding literate workers to employ in your business, and 2) having to devote more time/money to guarding your stuff. There are many societies around the world where the price of success is having to live behind barbed wire and walls, and when you do venture out you have to worry about being kidnapped and held for ransom. Those tend to be societies where everyone is on their own, and there is little or no sense of "community". Like it or not, the connection between things is not always simple, and more $$ in your pocket does not always mean you are more free to do the things you may want to do. Again, that's not to say that I agree with everything the Government has spent money on. For example I am appalled at the waste of money and lives spent pursuing military adventurism. I am very nervous about the gamble that the "economic stimulus" will generate enough revenue to pay for itself over any reasonable time frame. On the other hand, doing nothing would have been a big gamble too, as a prolonged recession or depression could reduce tax revenues to the point where, after mandatory payments on the existing debt, not enough would have been left to cover necessary functions including the military. Of course, some would be very happy with that outcome too. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Well that settles it I guess. I bow to your superior constitutional scholarship. Well, actually not. The writers could easily have written in the Bill of Rights: "with regard to the general welfare, the government shall do fuck all", but that probably wouldn't have garnered a lot of popular support. I recall another thread where the meaning of the word "promote" was debated, and I recall your position there was basically that it meant nothing more than "send positive vibes", but historically the dominant view has been that to "promote" means to actually do something, to take action. I think it's a rather perverse view of government to say that in the event of a military threat it can mobilize the military, but in the event of an epidemic it shouldn't do anything to help people (which follows from your "military and judicial system OK, everything else no way" comment up thread). Cool, so you've already conceded that the government has to have some role in the economy. The only question then is how much, but the principle "no role at all" is recognized as unworkable. Well, although the founders were remarkably prescient, and produced a constitution and bill of rights that has proved to be remarkably adaptible to changing circumstances, it is asking a bit much to expect them to have anticipated every future change to the country. In 1790 the population (excluding Native Americans) of the country was about 4 million, essentially all living East of the Appalacians. Anyone who didn't "fit in" was free to head West and steal land from the indigenous people, and many did. The economy was almost entirely centered on agriculture; as this was pre-industrial revolution issues of industrial pollution and widespread environment degradation had yet to arise (except perhaps in a few very localized situations). Medicine was still at the level of mustard packs and leeching, and was probably more adept at hastening people's demise that providing relief. The recognition of the "germ theory" of infectious disease was still a century in the future. How could the founders possibly have anticipated the need to protect the population from industrial pollution? Why would they have had anything to say about access to life-saving technologies that were beyond the realm of anyone's imagination at the time? Yet, they did provide for these circumstanses, by empowering the Federal Government to "promote the general welfare". Our country is vastly different today: there is no "relief valve" of sending people further and further West, and with almost 100 times the population (now 307 million) almost anything anyone does has some impact on other people. Just the sheer number of people provide significant problems, for example how do we dispose of all their waste? Do we leave it up to every person to make sure every bowel movement is properly disinfected and disposed of? The Constitution doesn't say anything about sewage treatment. While there no doubt were mentally ill people at the time to Constitution was being written, they were few in number (as the population overall was small) and assuming they escaped burning as witches they were likely to end up in prison. Now they populate the streets of our towns and cities, begging and sometimes threating people (there have been 5 murders and 1 near-murder in my town of 120,000 people in the last 2 years because there are no mental health facilities that have any room in North Georgia). Obviously just saying they should take care of their own treatment isn't cutting it, as mentally ill people as a rule 1) don't have the resources to pay for their own treatment, and 2) they almost never recognize that they are ill. Somehow charities don't seem to be up to the job either. Powerful technologies (transportation, communications for example) can enrich our lives in ways not dreamt of in the 19th century, but to work efficiently they require regulation and sometimes public investment. Like it or not, the country has changed vastly since the 18th century, and attention has to be paid to a lot of things that could be ignored without consequence back then. The Constitution is flexible enough to accomodate that. A system of "I'll do whatever I want, I don't have to consider anybody else" probably isn't. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The constitution we have now compels the Federal government to promote (or "provide for") the general welfare. It's hard to see how that could be done without any involvement in the economy. I disagree with the notion that "freedom" and "government" are mutually exclusive; sometimes judiciously applied regulation can result in more freedom. For example, the natural outcome of unfettered competition will often be the emergence of monopolies, as happened in the US in the early 20th century (Standard Oil being one example). Once a corporation has achieved monopolistic control over some product, they can charge whatever they wish for the product, and the only "freedom" people have is to pay that price or do without entirely. For some products (gas, for example), that would essentially give the corporation control over the entire economy, as they could shut everything down by restricting supply. In the absence of any government involvement in the economy, they could also prevent any competitors from starting up by selling the product below the cost of production until the start-up goes bankrupt, and recover their losses by jacking up the price even higher afterwards. Government regulation that promotes competition increases the freedom of everybody by ensuring that you have a choice of who to buy from, and at what price as there will be competition between corporations to offer the best product for the lowest price. Similarly, in the absence of any regulation of dumping toxic waste generated by the production of products, those corporations that avoid the costs of cleaning up their waste will be able to sell for a lower price, so they will pretty much always win in the marketplace. However my "freedom" will be negatively impacted by the lack of safe air to breath or water to drink. Requiring industry to clean up the waste they generate does not put them at a relative disadvantage if the same regulations apply to every corporation, and it provides me with the freedom to go about my business without having to breath bottled oxygen (as is common in some places). Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Prius vs Hummer: '...Through a study by CNW Marketing...' The piece you cut and pasted is a piece of marketing propaganda (note the source) that has been completely discredited, to the point where the conclusions are completely reversed, by more objective analysis such as: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf. Here's the abstract of that analysis: "The CNW Marketing Research, Inc.’s 2007 “Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles From Concept to Disposal” caught the interest of the media and the public with its claim that a Hummer H3 SUV has a lower life-cycle energy cost than a Toyota Prius hybrid. Closer inspection suggests that the report’s conclusions rely on faulty methods of analysis, untenable assumptions, selective use and presentation of data, and a complete lack of peer review. Even the most cursory look reveals serious biases and flaws: the average Hummer H1 is assumed to travel 379,000 miles and last for 35 years, while the average Prius is assumed to last only 109,000 miles over less than 12 years. These selective and unsupported assumptions distort the final results. A quick re-analysis with peer-reviewed data leads to completely opposite conclusions: the life-cycle energy requirements of hybrids and smaller cars are far lower than Hummers and other large SUVs. CNW should either release its full report, including methods, assumptions, and data, or the public should ignore its conclusions. Unfortunately, “Dust to Dust” has already distorted the public debate." Also, although it's true that Sudbury suffered from serious environmental damage 40 years ago, smokestack scrubbers and other environmental controls have almost completely reversed this situation. It's also disingenuous to use outdated information as an attack on nickel production while failing to acknowledge that Detroit to this day remains a significant environmental blight as a result of all the heavy industry, primarily related to auto manufacturing (including Hummers). Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Sounds like fun! Can you wear your rig on the helicopter? Although a bandit jump from a police helicopter just might be asking for trouble. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Knock 'em dead! On second thought.... Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Clearly Amazon could have handled this better on a couple of levels. They should have made more of an effort to verify the copyright status/proper licensing of the works, and they could have done a much better job of informing their customers of their actions. On the other hand, the customers have a responsibility to understand the contracts they agree to. In a way Kindle is more like a library in the sense that you can get access but don't own the works, the only difference is that you don't normally have to return them. That could be made more explicit to customers. I think it's kind of ironic that "1984" was involved in this. In "1984" the government would rewrite history, change all the records whenever policies or alliances changed so the populace could never prove that things hadn't always been the way they are "now". How much easier would that be if the government (or some private company) could just replace computer files in the middle of the night, instead of deleting them? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Yep, it's one of my all-time favorite books. I wonder why Harper Lee never wrote anything after that? And I agree that the law must treat everyone equally. For that matter, I disagree with racial quotas and feel that affirmative action programs have long outlived whatever justification they may once have had. But I'm afraid I don't get your point? The point I was trying to make was simply that in order to obtain fair (i.e. equal, not "specially priviledged") treatment, sometimes people have to fight back against illegal forms of discrimination, and in order to do that you may need to point to (for example) extreme racial disparities in hiring as evidence of discrimination based on race. If, as Anvil seemed to suggest (and I have have over-read his statement) the courts can never under any circumstances consider race, that would make it impossible to contest even the most flagrant instances of illegal forms of discrimination. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I agree that that would be ideal. So here is the nub of the problem in the real world. Racism does exist, unfortunately. Given that there will be situations where some people will refuse to hire/rent or sell property/ etc to other people based on their race (or religion, or gender), should the law just ignore that sort of discrimination and allow it to occur without consequences (which would be the effect of having no laws at all that consider race in any manner)? On the other hand, if we say that discrimination in the workplace/housing/education is so unacceptable that we we need to have laws prohibiting such practices, then the law also has to establish standards and tests to determine when discrimination has occurred. That necessarily requires comparisons between races (or other categories) to see if hiring practices, for example, are "race-neutral". I can't see how you could have legal prohibitions against racist hiring practices while at the same time telling the courts that they can't even consider the racial makeup of groups that are/are not hired (or promoted). How else could you ever demonstrate that racial discrimination was in fact happening? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Sotomayor's ruling upholding a lower court's decision was based on 1) existing Federal law that held that if an employment-related action had a disproportionate adverse effect on an identifiable racial group, that action is held to be discriminatory, regardless of the intent of the action (so it is the effect that matters, not just the intent), and 2) prior SC rulings upholding that law. What you seem to want is an activist judge who disregards existing law and precedent in order to come up with decisions that fit YOUR desires. It is the current SC who rewrote the law to conform with their conservative philosophies, Sotomayor's ruling was the correct one at the time if following the law is what you want in a judge. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

It was Benjamin Franklin: “[W]hy should Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements and, by herding together, establish their Language and Manners, to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?” Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I haven't seen the actual test, I don't even know if it's available online (a google search brings up a million articles that refer to the test, but not the test itself as far as I have been able to find). Anyway I'm not a firefighter and couldn't judge that aspect of the test. So what follows is my speculation. One of the articles mentioned that the "written" portion of the test consisted of 100 multiple choice questions. My experience with such tests, both taking them and making them up for the classes I teach, is that some of the choices will be way out, but some will be very close to the one correct answer. Commonly at least some questions will be deliberately "tricky", so that distinguishing the right answer will depend on careful reading and parsing the specific meaning of the language of the possible answers. It's very easy to set a test where the score will depend as much on vocabulary and reading skills as it does on knowledge of the subject material. That's why I personally dislike multiple choice tests and much prefer a format where students have to write out an answer. Oral or written exams are harder to unintentionally bias, since the questions are usually more straightforward, and the examinee speaks or writes their response directly instead of having to choose from amongst several very similar, deliberately confusing answers. Another advantage of the oral exam is that there is opportunity for back-and-forth, so the examiner can always ask follow-up questions to make sure they can assess whether or not the examinee has the knowledge the question is directed towards. In the case in question, New Haven weighted the "written" (actually multiple choice) test most heavily, and nearly Bridgeport weights the oral exam more heavily, and Bridgeport seems not to have problems with "minority" candidates being unable to meet the criteria for promotion. Reading and writing skills are influenced by education, and school performance is influenced by factors like class size, teacher quality, and teaching materials, all of which are influenced by finances. Given that most school districts are funded mainly from the local property tax base, it's not unreasonable to suggest that, on average, people who graduate from schools in poor districts may have a harder time with tests that indirectly measure vocabulary skills, compared to people who go to better-off schools with smaller class sizes, more personal attention, and more up-to-date teaching methodologies and materials. Since average income and education in the USA still correlate with race (although the variances are huge), it's not impossible that, on average, people from some racial groups might have a harder time with certain test designs than people from other racial groups. Cultural practices such as speaking dialects like "ebonics", with non-standard word and grammar usage, might exacerbate the problem. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So can I assume you provide your "internet security" services for free, and make your living charging people to watch, or maybe you sell them T-shirts? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Here you go: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/02_NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.asp#TopOfPage Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Cute story about a gay (male) penguin couple taking on an egg/chick that had been rejected by its straight parents: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/05/gay-penguins-adopt005.html#socialcomments So, is there a special "lake of fire" (or iceberg of fire in this case) in Hell for gay penguins? Or does this story just demonstrate that homosexual behavior is a perfectly natural phenomenon in lots of species besides humans? If only humans have free will, and God created everything just the way it is (evolution being a liberal lie), doesn't this mean that God made these animals gay? And why doesn't the iceberg of fire just melt? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Perhaps in time Iran can get back to where it was in 1953, before a US-led coup (Operation Ajax) ousted the democratically elected government and installed the Shah of Iran, who then went on to lead decades of exceedingly harsh suppression of political freedom through his CIA-trained secret police (called "SAVAK"). Our track record of "nation building" in that part of the world has been anything but stellar. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

What do you think of her actual record on the bench? Decisions like: “…it is not for the courts to make policy...if policy is to be changed, Congress or federal agencies must do it.” and: “…under our Constitution, even a white bigot has the right to speak his mind.” Do you find those statements offensive too? In over 100 cases involving some allegation of discrimination, she has found in favor of the party that alleges discrimination only 1/8 of the time. Hardly the record of an "activist judge". Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Here’s some info from Sotomayor’s judicial record that pertain to her alleged racism (and here’s the link to the source http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104941870): (I've underlined some especiaslly inflammatory passages for emphasis.) “In [a] case involving a black couple bumped from an American Airlines international flight, Sotomayor said their race discrimination claim was clearly trumped by an international treaty governing airline rules. It matters not, she said, that her ruling might mean airlines could discriminate on a wholesale basis and that there would be no legal recourse. The treaty's language is clear and it is not for the courts to make policy, she said, adding that if policy is to be changed, Congress or federal agencies must do it.” “Sotomayor … dissented when her colleagues allowed the New York City Police Department to fire one of its officers for sending hate mail on his own time. While the hate mail was patently offensive, hateful and insulting, Sotomayor wrote, it did not interfere with the operations of the police department, and, she observed, under our Constitution, even a white bigot has the right to speak his mind.” “As a judge, Sotomayor has ruled in 100 cases that involve questions of racial discrimination of one sort or another. Tom Goldstein, Supreme Court advocate and founder of the leading Supreme Court blog, has read all of those decisions. He says that Sotomayor does not seem to put her thumb on the scale and has in fact, most of the time, ruled against those charging discrimination. In only 1 of out 8 cases, he says, has she favored in some sense claims of discrimination. "The fact that she so rarely upholds discrimination claims I think answers the idea that she is always angling for minorities," he says.” “Sotomayor has not been reversed by the Supreme Court in any of her race cases, but that is likely to change in the next few weeks when the high court issues a decision in what is widely viewed as her most controversial ruling. It involves the city of New Haven, Conn.'s new promotion exam, which resulted in no African-Americans scoring high enough to be promoted. The city's lawyers warned that the test results were a red flag that made New Haven liable to losing a lawsuit from black firefighters. So the city discarded the exam and the results. Instead, the city was sued by a group of white firefighters who charged reverse racial discrimination. A federal district court judge held a fact-finding hearing and, in a 48-page opinion, said the city was discriminating against no one because all of the test results were discarded and nobody was promoted. Sotomayor was on a three-judge panel that reviewed that decision. In a six-sentence unsigned order, the panel said that because the test appeared to violate a provision of federal law that treats such racially disproportionate test results with grave suspicion, the city was within its rights to take the steps necessary to avoid liability. Wow! “…it is not for the courts to make policy...if policy is to be changed, Congress or federal agencies must do it.” “…under our Constitution, even a white bigot has the right to speak his mind.” Clearly the ranting of a racist lunatic! It’d be insane to let someone with those views on the Supreme Court! Think of the damage she’d do! [/sarcasm] Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The story of the missing H-bomb is very well known, I've seen several articles in local papers or on the TV news since I moved to Georgia nearly 13 years ago. There is no big cover-up. The military apparently still looks for it fairly regularly. A couple of years ago a team of University of Georgia oceanographers tried to find it by sampling sediment from the sea floor and analyzing it for chemicals that would be released as the bomb rusted and exposed the detonation device. No such chemicals, and no radioactivity above background, were found. Also some private "treasure hunters" try regularly to locate it, so they can collect a reward from the military. How could the bomb just disappear? The exact location of the drop isn't known, so the search area is I recall over 100 square miles. Remember this was an emergency drop from a critically damaged aircraft where the pilots were busy just staying in the air, plus the technology of the day would have been a lot less precise about the exact position of the plane (which was moving at a significant speed). Also the bomb may have been carried with water currents for a distance after impacting he water (although probably not miles). Most significant, the sea floor in that area has large regions of very fine silt, and a heavy compact object like a bomb would penetrate several feet below the surface. It's likely that it would never have been findable by a visual search. In the time since, water currents could move silt around and bury it even more, or uncover it, there's no way to tell. The article you pasted is sensationalistic BS IMHO. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The reporter isn't in the helicopter, he's getting feed from a camera mounted on the underside so he only has the image on the screen to go by. At one point he comments that he isn't getting any communication from the helicopter. No doubt the pilot has his/her hands full watching for other aircraft. The reporter comments about a police helicopter also following the car driver as he's running, and often there will be other news choppers around as well. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

When I lived in Holland (AKA the Netherlands) I was told that the penalties for DUI included confiscation of your vehicle. You'd get it back after a while, but in the meantime it had had a date with a press, so it generally resembled a 3' x 3' x 3' cube. The logic was supposedly that most people spend for a car in some proportion to their wealth, so someone of modest means might drive a Fiat (or worse a Citroen), and the wealthy a Porsch. Either way, the sting would be roughly the same. No slack would be cut if you were driving your parents car, or your friends. Imagine explaining to your parents that their car had been cubed because of your DUI. Just as bad, imagine if you're still making payments; now your car is gone, and you still have to pay back the loan. Since most people spend a bit more than they really need to on a car, you'd probably not be able to afford another until the loan was paid back, so you'd be looking at a few years of public transit. I don't know if things are still done that way, or if I got the story straight, but it does seem like an interesting approach to the problem. Maybe not for the first DUI, but certainly for a second (or third, and so on) conviction. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

That seems very similar to the story of HeLa cells. They are a cell line developed from a cervical cancer tumor removed from a woman named Henrietta Lacks. It proved to be a very useful cell line for cancer research and is now grown in thousands of labs around the world. Ms Lacks died in 1951, but her cells (or a cell line derived from them, which is not exactly the same thing) are still going strong; in fact if you added them all up they would amount to several hundred times the number of cells in a single person, so in a sense she has been reproducing very efficiently. In another thread, some people are arguing that a fertilized egg should have all the rights of a person, because it contains a full complement of human DNA. I wonder if that reasoning would lead to the conclusion that Ms Lacks, or Mr Moore, never really died and their "soul" is now somehow inhabiting tissue culture flasks around the world. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)