GeorgiaDon

I always thought that "murder" required an intent to kill, either planned (first degree) or spur of the moment (second degree). I also thought that doing something that unintentionally resulted in someone's death was manslaughter, or criminal negligence depending on how foreseeable it was that the action was likely to be lethal. However, I see cases like this all the time in the news where there was obviously no intent to kill, yet the defendant is charged with murder. We had a similar case in my town a few years ago: parents punished their kid (who had been suspended from school for stealing) by spanking with a belt. Unfortunately the kid was quite obese, and the dad spanked him hard enough to break a blood vessel in the kids butt, and a piece of fat dislodged, got into the blood vessel, lodged in the kids lung and killed him. Clearly dad way overdid the spanking, but also clearly dad did not intend to kill his son. Nevertheless both mom (who also participated in the spanking) and dad were charged with capital murder and the prosecution sought the death penalty. They were convicted and sentenced to life without parole. On the other hand, if you're rich enough you can shoot your neighbor, cut up his body and dump it in the bay, and then get away with it by claiming "self defense". I think some of these cases come about because of the politics of running for office; if you don't jack up charges on cases like this, the next election your opponent will accuse you of being a "baby killer lover". I've never liked the idea of prosecutors or judges being an elected office; the judicial system should be completely divorced from politics. 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)

Congrats. Grandkids are something special. 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 they own anything more expensive than average? An F-150 instead of a Fiesta? A house worth more than $115k? Any purely frivolous items like a nice set of golf clubs or a designer suit? Any of them send their kids to private school? Any of them skydive? (Not an inexpensive hobby). If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then why don't you think they're douchebags? Just piling on. 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)

Back in the 70s I spent several summers working with people doing environmental surveys on lakes in Ontario and Quebec. These lakes, which had formerly been quite biologically productive (great fishing, for example), were at that time (mid 70s) almost sterile, and quite acid. They looked great, the water was super clear, but that was because they were also quite dead: no fish, virtually no phytoplankton or zooplankton. The bedrock was Canadian Shield, meaning granite, schist, and other igneous and metamorphic rock, but no carbonates (such as limestone or marble) to provide any buffering capacity. We were measuring the pH of rainfall as low as 3 at times. Curiously enough, after regulations were passed that required scrubbers on smokestacks the pH of rainfall returned to closer to normal (slightly on the acid side due to CO2/carbonic acid). The pH of the lakes also rose, and they are again productive. But I suppose that's all just a coincidence, and removing SO2 from the smokestack emissions had nothing to do with the pH of rainfall. 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)

You overlook the fact that the law as written would require to EPA to either release personal identifying data on every participant in any clinical study they used (which would put them in violation of HIPPA), or not use that study at all as a source of information. Similarly, any proprietary information provided to the EPA by private companies (such as, for example, the composition of fracking fluids) would have to be made public. No industry is going to cooperate with the EPA if that requires them to publicly disclose trade secrets. This is plainly a bill designed to paralyze the EPA and make it impossible to access much of the information needed to make rational decisions about any environmental pollutant. Similarly the other bill (summary here) that passed the House a while back would bar any scientist from discussing or referencing their own work in advising the EPA. For example, because I have received NIH funding to work on mosquito-transmitted diseases I would be banned from providing expert testimony, on anything having to do with vector-borne diseases. If you exclude all the scientists who actually work on a topic from providing expertise, who do you have left? 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 class envy. Why do you hate people just because they got an education that leads to a well paying career? It's great that you are thinking about these issues instead of just assuming anything BHO says must be wrong. Is anyone forcing you to pay for their transportation? I though Google was doing that. Do private companies have to run their ideas about how to spend their money past you for approval? Why do you care if Google pays for buses? Sounds like envy again. My great-grandfather could not understand why people wanted cars they could drive, either. Perhaps that was related to his business, which was selling hay so people could feed their horses. Why do you feel qualified to judge what products businesses decide to invest in? If you mean you don't need a self-driving car, I feel the same way. For now. My next door neighbor, who is in her 80s, just had to give up her license, and it has really screwed up her life. To go buy food, or go to the doctor, or get her hair done, she has to prevail on a friend to drive her. Quite often these days "friend" means my wife, when she isn't at work. Either that, or cough up $20ish each way for a taxi. A self-driving car would go a long way to restoring her independence. I hate to think about it, but when I get to the age when it's not safe for me to be behind the wheel I'd love to have a self-driving car. 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)

While I share your dislike of the National Guard being used to spy on me, it does seem this is not a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. From the Wikipedia article on the Act: "The Act only specifically applies to the Army and Air Force, as amended in 1956. While the Act does not explicitly mention the naval services – the Navy and Marine Corps – the Department of the Navy has prescribed regulations that are generally construed to give the Act force with respect to those services as well. The Act does not apply to the Army and Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor. The United States Coast Guard, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security, is not covered by the Posse Comitatus Act either, primarily because although the Coast Guard is an armed service, it also has both a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency mission." [I indicated the relevant bit in bold]. Like you, I assumed the Act applied to all military, so I learned something. I still don't like the idea of National Guard aircraft being used to survey the sheep. 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 that's really the root of the problem with financial "benefits" to individuals that come from the government. Once the dust settles, the individual is not benefited and you just end up with superfluous gears in the machine that would hurt people to remove, so no one ever does. As you noted, being able to deduct mortgage interest doesn't actually make it easier to afford home ownership, it means everyone can now afford to spend more to buy a house. It just turns "house dollars" into a different, inflated currency that only houses and mortgages are traded in.Canada has never allowed mortgage interest to be tax deductible, and home ownership rates are at least as high as the rate in the US, which suggests the deduction doesn't do much to promote home ownership. Incidentally, home prices are significantly higher in Canadian cities than they are in US cities. 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 that's true, it's only because living implies eventually dying. According to your belief system God designed everything, so doesn't that just mean God sentenced us all to the DP? 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 missing the point of your complaint. Those prices represent free market capitalism at work. It's not the government that has created an "economically gated community". The market does not care that someone can only afford $700-800/month for rent, as long as there is a sufficient supply of people able and willing to pay five times that amount. I am surprised that you of all people would have anything negative to say about that. Do you see a free market fix for the affordable housing situation? Be sure to consider land costs there; do you think it is even possible for developers to buy land and put up housing that would come close to affordable? Even if they could build cheaply, if people are willing to pay $4-5,000/month, why would you expect a landlord to charge less? Alternatively, are you OK with paying bus drivers, teachers, and all the other folks who are needed to make a city function a salary that would allow them to live there? Say, $100,000 a year starting salary for teachers? What's the alternative? If you (not Airdvr "you", the whole society "you") don't want to pay a living wage (which includes enough to pay for a place to live), and you don't want affordable transportation so that people can live in less expensive areas yet still get to work, how is that supposed to function? Also, why do you (Airdvr you) care how Google spends its money? If they want to provide cheap transportation so people can get around without jamming the roads with cars, why should that be controversial? I don't see any of this as racist against brown people, I see it as an inevitable consequence of the growing income gap, where people are either quite well off or they are poor, with little in between. Given that Republican (and Libertarian) policies are all about feeding the income gap, I think you are off the mark about any of this being "the blueprint for the future according to high ranking liberals". You are looking at an economic version of the Republican ideal. 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 pretty funny. Maybe you should have tried out a russian accent on him. Now mullets, that should be illegal! 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, at least they thought they could. I'm sure they don't share the "humorous" stories about the times they screwed up. Just like people still disappear when they wander too close to an illegal moonshine still up in the mountains (queue the banjo music)? Anyway the whole tactic of making something illegal, forcing it into the criminal economy, then using the association with criminal violence to justify making it illegal is totally circular and self-reinforcing. Using that logic, Prohibition would never have been lifted. Of course, in parts of the South it never was, but at least it's only illegal to sell, not to possess. 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 think the reason that they can get away with it is the "released on bail" part. According to the story, they offered to allow him to go free on $50k bail, but he doesn't even have $5 to put up. So, in theory, he could be freed. But in reality, he's sitting for a long, long time This is a common problem for the poor. Many of the recipients of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's style of "justice" are in this boat: awaiting trial, not convicted (and so "presumed innocent" ) but unable to afford bail. 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 don't see it the same at all. In your case, you perceived an imminent threat to people and property, one that demanded immediate action. Your actions were the only reasonable and ethical course under the circumstances. In the pot raid, a person was subjected to an unnecessary intrusion and detention by police who acted precipitously, not taking any time to investigate and verify anything beyond a vague suspicion based on a helicopter overflight. The homeowner certainly did not consider the raid to be a joke, he was traumatized by the invasion and is now worried about the damage to his reputation in his community. How can you compensate that with money? By "repercussions" I don't mean monetary payment, though I realize that for some money makes all problems go away. I mean retraining so cops can actually recognize pot plants as distinct from other shrubs that happen to be green and have narrow leaves, a change in protocols so citizens are not subject to such frivolous raids, and perhaps a couple of days of unpaid vacation for whoever approved the raid on such flimsy grounds. In the larger sense, this case nicely illustrates some of the idiotic consequences of the "war on drugs". Taxpayers have to pay so police can fly helicopters over their homes and make a mockery of any notion of privacy. Even worse, many departments fund a large part of this big brother operation by seizing property from citizens, who then have to go to great uncompensated expense to prove that their property was obtained legally; this is no more than highway robbery. And then there are incidents such as dropping flash bang grenades into a crib with a sleeping baby. The cops say, "oops, we're only human" and the family gets $1,000,000 and climbing in medical bills to fix the kids face and close the hole burned through his chest and into his lung. No drugs were found, no arrest made, but the cops claim it's not their problem. "We're not robots" and all 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)

My understanding is that it is rooted in the 1st amendment. Taxation is a form of control, and also implies a superior/subordinate relationship. The superior entity does the taxing, the subordinate the paying. In order to establish the separation of the state* and religious organizations, there can be no means by which the state* can exert power or control, hence the state* cannot tax religious organizations. If I am wrong about this I'm sure some of our resident legal eagles will correct me. *Note that by "state" the law applies to all levels of government, municipal, State, and Federal. This is a common use of the term "state", contrary to the moronic interpretation of certain anti-ACA idiots who insist that "state" refers only to the level of government between Municipal and Federal. 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)

Fried Okra goes good with Bunny StewI wonder how it goes with Crow. Don Do you really think they will take a serious hit from this?I live in Georgia and saw the story when it was first reported several months ago, and as far as I can tell there are almost never any repercussions no matter how bad the police screw up here. 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)

Fried Okra goes good with Bunny StewI wonder how it goes with Crow. 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 like this. Just a checklist/booklet new parents can refer to of all the potentially risky things in a household, what the risk to children is, and what precautions might be taken. Some things seem obvious, yet it's also easy to overlook potential problems, especially if you're overtired or dealing with a big lifestyle change (new baby in addition to older siblings in the household). There is a reason pilots have checklists. Doctors shouldn't have to ask about guns in the household any more than they ask about swimming pools or stairs, but there's no harm in providing literature to educate parents. The doctor should not have to ask, and so she would not have any information to pass on to "big brother". On the other hand, "gag orders" like this law nicely illustrate how the NRA has our legislators firmly by the short and curlies. 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)

Peter Ward, as paleontologist who specializes in mass extinction events, has in several "popular science" type books described the outcome of global warming in just those terms. There have been several less extreme climate events in the Earth's history that seem to most people to be "no big deal" now (tens or hundreds of millions of years later) but they were a big deal to the species alive (and afterward not) at the time. What is your definition of a "big deal"? Certainly the extinction of humanity would be a "big deal", but no-one realistically expects that to happen. A sizeable fraction of the human population lives on river deltas, and those areas are also some of the richest farmland (think of Bangladesh for example). A sea level rise of 30 meters would displace hundreds of millions of people and cause the loss of a significant fraction of the arable land. Would that be the end of humanity? Obviously not. Would it be a big deal? I'm inclined to think so. You may think otherwise. Is that a prediction? Based on what model? Or is it your opinion? We've been around this before, and we probably just need to agree to disagree. My perspective is that past events have included some rather fast and significant shifts in climate, many of which we do not understand the cause (and some we do, such as Milankovitch cycles). The historical record suggests that feedback controls on climate are complex and poorly understood (as evidenced by the lack of precision of current climate models) but also that there seems to be various stable equilibria for the climate, so that once pushed beyond a threshold (which we do not know) the climate can shift to a new pattern and remain stable there until something else forces it to shift to a different equilibrium point. The alternative model is that climate responds slowly and linearly to inputs, which suggests it is a simple system regulated by only a small number of direct inputs. Lets illustrate it this way. Imagine an increasing concentration of a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Which model will best fit the climate response? Model A: a linear temperature increase over time. Model B: a series of steps, with relatively flat spots (where feedback controls can stabilize temperature and maintain an equilibrium), interspersed with sudden jumps to the next equilibrium point (when feedbacks can't contain the forcing and the system shifts to a new equilibrium). Which model is more accurate? I guess we are doing that experiment right now. Nope, I have never heard that suggested On the other hand, there is a lot of discussion of the consequences of climate change for the distribution of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria. Last year I was invited to give a talk about that at an ecology meeting. I think they were taken aback by what I had to say, and I noticed I wasn't invited back this year. Here's a quick synopsis of what I told them: 1) The prediction that increasing temperatures will cause malaria to spread in the US and Europe is based on the assumption that malaria is a tropical disease and unsuitable climate is what currently keeps it out of those areas. In fact up until the 1930s or so there was a lot of malaria in the US, and malaria was common in Europe up as far as the Scandanavian countries up until a century or so ago. In the 1870s about 40,000-50,000 people died each year in the US from malaria. The climate here is already quite suitable for malaria. The factors that led to the elimination of malaria in the US and Europe have nothing to do with climate (they involve economic development, human behavior, public health and health care), and a warming climate will likely have no impact on malaria in the US or Europe. However malaria in Africa may decrease because there is such a thing as too hot for malaria transmission (basically, mosquitoes don't live long enough when it is too hot). 2. You can't prove an epidemic happened because of warming climate, so the best you can do is to eliminate all the other possible causes. Epidemics of some previously tropical diseases (such as Chikungunya fever) have recently occurred in southern Europe. The actual reason for this is that the Asian Tiger Mosquito was introduced into Europe a few years ago, and this mosquito is an excellent vector for Chikungunya and other diseases such as Dengue. Before that, there were no good Chikungunya vectors in Europe. The Tiger mosquito is well adapted to temperate and subtropical climates; it does well in Europe because Europe already has a favorable climate, not because of any warming. So the spread of these diseases into Europe has nothing to do with warming climates, and everything to do with us moving insect vectors around the world. Interestingly, the same mosquito was introduced to the US in the 1980s and has spread throughout the Gulf states, up the eastern seaboard to Delaware/New Jersey, and up the Mississippi valley. In the meantime Chikungunya virtually exploded in the Caribbean in 2013 (about a million cases in 2014) and has started to pop up in southern Florida, as has another disease, Dengue. You can expect epidemics of both on the US mainland in the near future. But, again, not due to climate change, but because we are very good at transplanting mosquitoes and other vectors to new areas all over 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)

My point was simply to point out the logical fallacy, often presented by Marc and by others, in the argument that the climate changed in the past due to natural forces and therefore any change now must be due to natural forces. I also take issue with the implication that climate change is not a problem because the planet has seen change in the past. There have been some pretty devastating natural events in the past. Read up on the Permian extinction; the biosphere came amazingly close to the complete extinction of multicellular animal and plant life, and it took over 15 million years before biodiversity recovered to anything close to the level it was at before the extinction event (actually a series of events spaced at intervals of a few thousand years). If we say "it's no big deal as it happened before and the planet survived", that implies that it is OK to screw up the biosphere to the point where multicellular life (including us) is only viable in a few spots (high arctic, and high elevations) that escaped the heat and low oxygen levels. This is not an argument that the current round of climate change will progress to such a point. It is just my reason for discounting the argument (as for example presented in Marc's original post) that past natural events allow us to disregard current climate change and humanity's role in causing it. I agree that hyperbolic statements about the short term consequences of climate change (crime in India, extinction of polar bears in the immediate future) are not helpful to the discussion. I think that reasonable people can disagree about what the probable consequences of climate change will be, and we can disagree about the relative risks of doing nothing and costs of doing something. Those are useful discussions to have. Saying "it happened before so it's no big deal" reflects ignorance of what happened before, and is not useful. 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)

Re: the general theme of this thread. Fires happen naturally (lightning strikes for example) and have for millions of years, so we should not be alarmed about the guy who just threw a Molotov cocktail through your window? Floods happen naturally, so we should not be concerned about that dam upstream that has developed major cracks? I don't get the logic of the argument that just because something happened due to natural forces in the past we should look the other way when human activity is causing it today. What standard does that leave us with? Anything that is not quite as bad as the worst that occurred due to natural causes is OK? The worst mass extinction in Earth's history was caused by a run-away greenhouse event at the end of the Permian, resulting in the mass extinction of over 95% of all the species alive at that time. It was certainly a natural event (as there were no humans at the time), instead it was most likely caused by a massive volcanic eruption (the Siberian Trapps) through one of the largest coal deposits in the world, releasing huge amounts of CO2 and methane from burning coal and also releasing methane hydrides from the sea floor, which also made most of the ocean anoxic. Is this our standard, anything less is just "oh well, it happened in the past so we won't worry about it if it happens now"? Marc, Iowa has been under water several times in the past. At one time (in the Late Cretaceous) there was an inland sea way that connected from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Arctic Ocean, completely bisecting the continent. That was due to natural forces. So, Marc, I assume you would not be disturbed at all if you woke up tomorrow to find your house was under several hundred feet of salt water. Because, you know, it happened in the past so it's no 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)

I wonder if he yelled "Fore....d!" as he came in. 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)

is that like a bagpipe? or an oboe? pretty sure a banjo fits the descriptionI've heard "perfect pitch" described as throwing an accordion through a window and taking out the bagpipe player on the sidewalk outside. 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've written about this dozens of times in threads you were a participant in, so forgive me if I chalk you up as one of those people who are so fossilized in their prejudices that facts cannot penetrate their skull (or gut, in the case of "truthiness"). For the rest, there are only four ways to legally immigrate to the US: 1. You can be sponsored by an immediate family member who is a US citizen. 2. You can be sponsored by an employer, provided they prove you have skills they have searched for and were unable to find within the US, and provided they are willing to pay a lot in USCIS fees. 3. You can buy your way in by investing $1 million dollars in an approved business. 4. You can self-sponsor (no family or employer sponsor) only if you can prove you have exceptional skills in the sciences, arts, or athletics, such that it is clearly in the national interest to have you here. I might note that a small number of green cards are awarded by the lottery system, but citizens of Mexico and the majority of other Latin American countries (as well as Canada, most European countries, China, India, and a bunch of other countries) are excluded entirely from the green card lottery. Most people enter under #1, and somewhat lesser but still significant numbers under #2. Only a few have $1,000,000 in loose change to invest (#3), and #4 only includes people like athletes who we want to have on our Olympic teams, and people of that caliber of skill in a handful of fields. For those who do have an immediate family member who is a US citizen, or do not have technical skills attractive enough to entice an employer to deal with seemingly endless paperwork and thousands of dollars in fees, there is essentially no way to come here legally. Ellis Island is a distant memory, the US is no longer welcoming of the tired, the poor, etc". 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 think I'll avoid any bike forums in fear of someone posting a picture of whatever a "speedo device" might be.I think it's a device that ensures any passing cars give as much room as possible. Wouldn't want to have to scrape that off your bumper! 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)