GeorgiaDon

In Colorado the farmers and ranchers (at least, the ones who have ancestors who claimed water rights 100 years ago) even own the rain that falls from the sky. It is illegal, and punishable by a $500/day fine, to use or divert water that is coming off your roof. Ranching interests this year blocked passage of a proposed law that would have allowed homeowners to use a rain barrel to catch rain to water their garden. The courts have not yet ruled whether or not farmers also own the clouds. 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'll ask you again: In all the training police go through, is there anything that puts them in the position of an innocent person, focused on some other task and perhaps with their hearing compromised by ear buds/music, who is unexpectedly confronted with an angry voice yelling behind them, or from somewhere in the darkness, and so on? From the perspective of the police officer, they will always consider the subject of their attention to be a suspect, and so will consider any action other than instantaneous compliance as resistance. However in many instances the subject is innocent of any crime (they may just happen to fit a vague description, white male average height early 20s for example), do not consider themselves to be a "suspect" in anything, and are caught totally off guard by the situation. Is there any attempt to account for this in police training? If I was walking somewhere, minding my own business, listening to music, and suddenly I hear someone screaming something from behind me, my first reaction would probably be to turn around to see what is going on. It almost certainly would not be to throw myself on the ground with my hands out, or whatever other command might be barked at me from out of the blue. It's disturbing, to say the least, to know that reacting to a disturbance in a completely natural and predictable way could not only get me killed, but also result in a judgement that it was somehow my fault so my family would be denied any compensation. 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 suspect we can look to the history of people's reaction to interracial marriage for an idea of what to expect. Some people will never accept same-sex marriage, and will show their displeasure, but such people are already in the minority and their numbers will decrease as they age and pass on. Most won't really care to intrude on other people's choices, even if that isn't something they would choose for themselves. American society is in generally pretty slow to change, so it is really amazing how quickly public opinion has changed on this issue. So, a minority will complain and be vocal about it, but violence will be rare to non-existent, no-body will move, and 20 years from now you'll have a hard time finding anyone who will admit to wanting things to go back to the way they used to be. Some time after that (like 200 years), people will vote to go metric. 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 did that 20-yr-old "Man" do to deserve death? Listen to music with ear buds? Questionable fashion sense? What crime was he convicted of that required execution? Serious question: in all that "training" that police supposedly get, do they ever have to play the role of an innocent citizen, paying attention to something else entirely (listening to music, searching for something on a store shelf, etc) who is completely out of the blue confronted with some screaming voice from behind them? Of course you couldn't do this in a classroom type setting, because then they would be expecting something to happen. You would have to do this totally at random, on a day off for example. Come up from behind, suddenly scream something at them, and if they fail to comply instantaneously and do exactly what you screamed at them, shoot them with a paintball gun. Who (besides a hyped-up cop) could possibly be surprised that people will turn around to see who is screaming at them, or move to turn down their mp3 player? In this case the cop was aware of what was going on. It was up to him to stay in control of his emotions. The victim never had any idea of the situation. He likely died without any fucking idea of what had just happened. Further, there was a second cop approaching from the side that you can see in the video. Had Officer Trigger-happy waited another couple of seconds that cop would have been in a position to catch the attention of the victim, and the matter could have been resolved with no injury to any party other than a few minutes lost to establish he was unarmed and not the person the police were looking for. This seems clearly to be yet another case where a cop needlessly acts in a way that puts themselves in a situation where they need to make a split-second decision. Inevitably these are judged to be "good kills" based only on the last one or two seconds of the interaction, rather than asking how the officer found themselves in that situation. They are "good kills" because it is human nature to turn to look at whoever is screaming at you, and it is human nature to turn down the volume of your music before attempting to speak to someone. Somehow these completely human and entirely predictable actions become justification for summary execution. Now another person is dead, their family left to mourn their senseless death, perhaps a spouse and children thrust into bottomless grief and a very real threat of a sudden detour into a life of poverty due to loss of a breadwinner. But the cops can pat each other on the back and say "good kill". That is truly fucked up. 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)

Thanks Andy. That makes sense to me. I think a jury could certainly look at the totality of the circumstances and come to a rational decision about his motive (just making up some "rap lyrics" vs trying to terrorize her). I was concerned the ruling meant a jury could no longer use their life experience to weigh the whole of the circumstances, but instead had to have specific evidence such as a diary entry detailing his plan to threaten her and disguise it as rap lyrics to fool the "authorities". I think the case was sent back to the lower court, rather than being dismissed outright, so I think he could be re-tried, with different instructions to the jury this time. 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. The prosecution just didn't prove it.Thanks guys. I was hoping you'd weigh in. So, how can you prove a "guilty mind", short of allowing the threatened behavior to take place? Do we have to wait for this guy's ex-wife to find out first hand if a folded up restraining order can stop a bullet? What sort of evidence short of that could prove that the guy had a "guilty mind"? In the example of the lab tech/student I cited, the student had to move, and she felt she was forced to cut short her PhD and settle for a Master's degree so she could finish up and move to another city (although to that point she had loved where she was living) just to get away from this guy. Her whole career and subsequent life were altered by this creep, and she was not the only person he affected that way. If one has to prove intent, what does this say about other crimes associated with behavior that is so reckless any reasonable person would know it is likely to injure or kill someone? Can I drop TVs off of buildings onto the crowded sidewalk below and argue I didn't intend to hurt anyone, I was just throwing away an old TV? Surely the guy who consumes 14 beers and then gets behind the wheel didn't intend to kill that family, so why should he be held responsible if "shit happens"? Even if any reasonable person knows that such actions are likely to result in "shit happening", should the courts have to prove those people were aware of the likelihood of "shit happening", and made a conscious decision to go ahead anyway? Is the "reasonable person" standard dead, or should it be? Isn't the whole jury system based (at least in theory) on 12 "reasonable people" weighing the evidence and rendering a decision? My personal life experience has been that I suck at reading minds. I may or may not be able to guess at motives behind people doing what they do. Generally, I am limited to observing what they do, the outcome, and deciding if that outcome was foreseeable. If the outcome was bad, and was recognizable in advance as a possibility, I have no problem holding people responsible for their choices. 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 Supreme Court rendered an interesting "

There are several solutions. All political. Which means nothing will be done.I'm genuinely curious about your ideas for solutions. My understanding is that the situation in California is complicated by the fact that about 80% of the water use is for agriculture, and many farmers have legal water rights going back to the 19th or early 20th centuries and so are immune from restrictions. That has spawned an arms race of well drilling, with the result that the aquifer is now also being depleted at an unsustainable rate. Re: "The water situation in the southwest is looking pretty bad." It's not just in the Southwest. Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been locked in a legal war over water from the Chattahochee River for decades. Much of Atlanta's growth has been fueled by illegal water withdrawals from Lake Lanier, the main reservoir on the Chatahoochee. Communities downstream are mostly getting "recharge water", water from the sewage treatment plants in Atlanta, and too little is reaching the Gulf in Florida to support ecosystems needed for fish and shrimp spawning. Speaking of "political solutions", some Georgia legislators came up with a doozy. They claim the survey done in the early 1800s to determine the Georgia/Tennessee boundary is off by one mile. They actually passed a state resolution to move the border one mile north. The point is, that would bring one shore of the Tennessee River into Georgia, and they planned to build a giant pipeline to such water from the Tennessee River to bring it to Atlanta. Never mind that the border issue was settled over 100 years ago by the US Supreme Court. The problem is, the only realistic solution is to limit growth to the available water, not the water in wet years but the water in the years of drought that frequently occur. However growth = tax revenues, and no politician is going to voluntarily curtail their own power and revenue stream. 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 I guess we do have the example of cold fusion that seemed to work sometimes, but that turned out to be an artifact due to a contaminant in the system (as I recall). Still it would be excellent if this result were to hold up. I suppose it's better to be a skeptic who is pleasantly surprised, or even just has their skepticism validated, than to be an optimist who regularly has their hopes crushed. 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)

If this is real and holds up, it'll be a game changer. If it's a gag it's amazingly well done. 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 get what you mean, and I agree with you. I'd just comment, though: isn't this exactly what lawyers do routinely regarding every accident or product liability claim? 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)

A theology student was being tested by his professor: Prof: Tell me about the meaning of Easter. Student: Isn't that when Jesus changed water into wine? Prof: No. Go back and study harder. 6 months pass. At the re-rest: Prof: Tell me about the meaning of Easter. Student: Well first, on Good Friday, Our Savior was crucified on a cross. Prof: That's so. Continue. Student: After He was dead, His followers took him down from the cross and placed him in a cave, and rolled a huge boulder to block the entrance. Prof: Yes, that's so. Continue. Student: Then after 3 days, Christ came back to life and got up. Prof: Exactly! And what happened then? Student: He rolled back the boulder, stepped out of the cave, saw his shadow in the sunlight, went back in the cave, and they all had 6 more weeks of winter? Don PS Happy Easter Ron and everyone. _____________________________________ 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'm in agreement with everything you wrote. I fear that the "downside" is wrt individual politician's base. They are so invested in stirring up bogeymen they may not be able to back down without paying for it. And hey, WWIII is not too big a price to pay for re-election (at least for some people). 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)

Good luck with that. 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)

If the only options are 1: negotiate, 2: Iran unilaterally capitulates without any assurance of receiving anything in return, and 3: war, and someone says 1 is totally unacceptable then I think it fair to say they want 3, given that anyone with any understanding of human nature knows that 2 is never going to happen. However if you wish you can modify that to say that those people find 3 preferable to 1. As if that makes any real difference. I think it is also germane that the US essentially created modern Iran in 1953 by overthrowing a democratically elected government (which was actually fairly Western leaning) and installing a ruthless dictator (but hey, he was our dictator puppet, right?). It's no surprise, and actually not unrealistic of them, that they regard the US as the "great satan", given how we fucked with them. So now we are supposed to continue to refuse to even speak with them, yet expect them to surrender their sovereignty and grovel at our feet? 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 there is no part in your brain that says they would be against it because they do not believe IRAN is a stable, secure and sane enough country to possess nukes? You fully believe they oppose it because all they want war is that what your saying? No-one wants Iran to gain possession of nuclear weapons. The question is, how can we prevent that from happening? If you take the position (as many in Congress do) that any attempt at diplomacy is wrongheaded and dangerously naive, what is left? Either Iran would have to suddenly decide to capitulate, without any assurance that that would change anything with regard to the sanctions, or we will have to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities by taking military action. I think it is safe to say that the leaders of Iran are not going to wake up tomorrow and say "you know what, we'll just dismantle our nuclear facilities and prostrate ourselves before the US and beg for forgiveness". I think it is safe to say that any congressman who sincerely wants to keep Iran from getting nukes yet refuses to negotiate with them understands that they are pushing for the only remaining option, which is military conflict. BTW can you point to any examples where we imposed sanctions on a country and refused to engage in diplomatic negotiations, and as a result that country caved and did exactly as we demanded? How well did that approach work with Cuba? 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)

Kerry is being quoted on CNN as saying that sanctions will be lifted in stages as elements of the accord are implemented and verified. I'm not seeing anything that suggests all sanctions will be lifted immediately, but of course your sources may differ. Re Dan's comment, I fear that will be correct. Some in Congress will be dissatisfied with anything that doesn't lead to another Mideast war. 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, that's the way it goes around speaker's corner these days. It's almost impossible to have an adult conversation about anything without some people turning everything and anything to a mindless attack on "liberals" or "conservitards" or whatever. Sad. I find it less than worthwhile to post any substantive response to threads these days. I can see why Nerdgirl and some others left. It would be nice to have a blocker so that any post that uses certain words such as "liberals", "Republiscums", "Conservitards" etc are automatically deleted, and the author is blocked from posting for a day. It would also be nice if people wrote in complete sentences and made even a cursory attempt at spelling and grammar, but that would probably exclude too many people. 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)

Hey, did you just infect me? Actually I think the video is pretty spot on. It's interesting (and depressing) how memes that provoke anger are so much more contagious than memes that educate, or memes that promote wonder and awe. 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)

Do you think government should run on a profit motive? Personally, I think things that can be done efficiently by for-profit businesses should be done by business. There are a lot of other things that are (to my mind) necessary functions of a civil society, but are not profitable. It is hard for me to see how one can make a profit out of ensuring that the air we all breath is not full of toxins. I do not think the judicial system should be put up for bid to those with the deepest pockets. And so on. Business has no responsibility to care for the well-being of society. That is the job of government. 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)

Mr. Perdue is my Senator. He's obviously a smart guy, smart enough to change his political tune according to the prevailing winds in his gerrymandered district. He supported Common Core, until that became a liability. He also supported Obamacare, until that became a liability. As is the case with many successful CEOs, his record shows a willingness to regard people (particularly working class people) as cogs in a machine, undeserving of consideration as human beings. He's made a fortune taking over companies and outsourcing the business to Mexico and elsewhere. Along the way he made sure that the American workers he left behind got nothing but "an empty bag". He ran a textile company called Pillowtex for 9 months, then left with a $1.7 million severance package, just before the company folded leaving 7,500 employees out of a job and without the pensions they had paid into for years. When he ran Dollar General the chain was successfully sued due to a consistent pattern of paying female managers less than males with similar experience. I should also acknowledge that he had some significant business successes. Dollar General actually expanded and eventually added jobs. Reebock increased in value a lot under his tenure, though it was the investors who profited as the jobs shifted to Mexico. I have no doubt that Mr. Perdue was a good CEO, providing value for investors at the expense of his employees. My question is, are the values often expressed by management (employees are a necessary evil, squeeze them as hard as you can and give them nothing you don't absolutely have to) the values we need to see in government? 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 just went and reread the paper referred to in the blog post you linked. I am quite sure the authors would be horrified to find out how their work is being misrepresented. From the abstract to the paper: "Knowledge of this spatial and temporal variation in seawater chemistry allows us to improve the design of OA experiments: we can test organisms with a priori expectations of their tolerance guardrails, based on their natural range of exposure. Such hypothesis-testing will provide a deeper understanding of the effects of OA." Note: OA is "ocean acidification". This is entirely reasonable: determine an organisms "tolerance guardrails" (the environmental extremes they can tolerate), and design OA experiments to take into account anticipated shifts in the range of environmental values, not just the "average". In no way is this saying that OA is not likely to be a problem for marine organisms, and it should not be read that way. 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)

1. What the hell is a "World's Best Ocean Scientist"? Who decides this? What factors are used in measuring or calculating "world's best"? It's not like "world's fastest" where you can run a race and actually see who wins. On the other hand, maybe "world's best" means "I found a guy who agrees with me". 2. Lots of things vary around some mean (middle) value, and organisms obviously can tolerate some temporary exposure to those conditions, but that does not mean they can survive long exposure to the extremes. Two familiar examples: The amount of sunlight varies dramatically on a daily cycle, from none at all for roughly half the time (this is called night) to anywhere from some to a lot the other half (which we call day). Care to guess what happens to plants when we put them in permanent dark? Care to guess what will eventually happen to the animals that feed on those plants? How about the animals that feed on the animals that feed on the plants? Just because plants can survive some period of darkness, are we justified in saying that they will be fine under permanent darkness? That they will just somehow adapt? Typically it is colder at night than it is during the day. It may even freeze at night, but warm up quite a lot during daylight hours, so that the average temperature is above freezing. Many animals have no problem with such conditions, they are active (feeding, for example) during the day and retreat to nests or burrows at night. Do you think this means they will be just fine if the average temperature shifts to the extreme low temperature they currently live under? If they can tolerate one night of 10 degrees below freezing, that means they will be able to survive just fine if the temperature stays at 10 below freezing permanently? Also consider that if the new average is what used to be at the extreme edge of short-term variation, the new extremes will also shift. An organism may be able to tolerate brief exposure to temperatures 20 degrees above the average (lets say the average is 70 and the extreme is 90, for example). If conditions shift so that the new average is, say, 85 (and so still within the limits set by the previous extremes), temperatures will still fluctuate from day to day so now that organism will be exposed to 105 degrees from time to time. Just because it could tolerate the occasional 85 degree day, does that automatically mean it will be able to tolerate 105 degrees? This is the essence of the argument your "world's best ocean scientist" is making (or at least, the argument the blogger is making based on what the "world's best" wrote). To my mind, that argument is naive and frankly stupid. 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's an attractive offer. You are aware that's not a sex toy, right? 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)

Same situation for me. I look at the positions the candidates take and vote for the one who is closest to me on things that are relevant to the office. I don't much care what the public utilities commissioner thinks about abortion, but I do care about their stance on alternative energy sources, for example. That means I've voted D, R, L, I, or even Green. Even if a third party doesn't win, if they get a significant percentage of the vote, and especially if that percentage is gradually increasing from election to election, it will encourage them (and their donors) to keep on trying. It would be hard to maintain supporters if you are always only a fringe vote, 1-2% and never growing. I think it's important to support the party that you would like to see win, even if they don't have a hope of it in this election. 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)