SudsyFist

We sponsored and agreed to these rules, with one very significant reason (among many) being to protect our own soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. Do you happen to have any children of service age, by chance?

Why not check before you post a question like this? It only takes a minute or two. Or is your point to just be confrontational? http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html If we agreed to international law via treaties (which we have, and I'll let you do the Googling on this one), then what does the Constitution say about it?

That's more along the lines of what I was thinking, but I don't have enough evidence to be certain. Kinda like the analogy I presented earlier, perhaps race is more of a circumstantial commonality among convicts, and we're overlooking other factors that are much more significant. On one hand, absolutely, but on the other hand, I think that attitude fosters a disregard of "white collar" criminal law. Frankly, I think the bulk of our law isn't really taken seriously, and our methods of enforcement have a lot to do with it. Take speed limits here in SoCal for example. Posted limit is 65, but everyone goes 80; CHP won't give you a second look unless you're over 75. Ah, a voice of reason.

I struggle to disbelieve the effect that mainstream media and entertainment has on the attitudes and motivations of the individual, but it's proven time and time again. "Turn off your TV..." No, one of the greatest things I love about my country is that if you don't like what you see, you *can* speak up. That opportunity was bought for us with the red blood of true patriots. Why don't you support that, I wonder?

This is just speculation here, but I figure one of the reasons to consider is that if the crime is violent, then there is a higher chance of its being reported, regardless of the neighborhood in which the crime took place. Although I can't say I have empirical evidence to back it up, I'm pretty sure more incidents of *violent* crime are actually occurring in these areas. As far as drug use and distribution, that's an activity which goes largely unreported, because all the participants are usually knowingly and willingly engaged in the crime. There are other crimes you can add to that, such as gambling and prostitution, which are also extremely prolific in some of these affluent neighborhoods, perhaps much moreso (think cashflow) than in the low-income areas. But you don't see anyone calling 911 to report a $2,500 escort who gave a horrible blowjob.

I can do a good accent, and my rubs are stellar.

Detachables don't count, ya peg-legged freak!

You and what penis extension?

Simple story: IP Addresses "near" the one that's being blocked. A subnet is a network in which all the machines can talk to each other without going through a router; they're all local to each other. A Class C network is a block of 256 IP addresses (i.e., 67.19.213.0 - 67.19.213.255), which is usually broken down into subnets. In network filters, sometimes engineers make mistakes in blocking entire networks or subnets, when the intention was to filter a specific address (spam relay, etc.). So, if it looks like a whole subnet or Class C was blocked, then it could very well have been such a mistake. If that one address is the only one which is blocked, however, then its being a mistake will be a much tougher case to prove, unless a rogue machine that was targeted for filtering had an IP address that was only off from this one by a single digit. EDIT: .0 is the network address, and therefore unusable by a host. Thought I'd add that before I get my peepee spanked.

It would be interesting if there were any other web sites in their subnet or class C which are also unavailable; that would indicate a potential technical issue (a stupid one, at that). If not -- if it's specifically this one site -- then the fireworks are gonna be cool.

That'd be cool, man. Good luck!

Great pics! Makes me wish I could've hung out more than one day.

Sorry to hear about the mistaken credit, Paul, but it's a great shot nonetheless.

I ran tracert's from two distinct networks, and neither one hit anything at atdn.net. Turns out that's an AOL/Time Warner thing. 12 hops and you're not even getting past your own ISP, there, man. I'm getting all the way to the destination host in 11!

PING/Tracert issues these days can be misleading, as a lot of networks block ICMP traffic, so it would be best to compare PING results with someone who *can* access the site to see if that's the case. And even if you can PING it, you can still be filtered at port 80 (HTTP). That being said, I'm on Cox, and I resolve www.prisonplanet.com to 67.19.213.18, and I do get PING replies. The website comes up normally for me. Hope this helps.

Right here: I was talking about the "certain places" themselves: the neighborhoods. Being *there* versus being black (or brown or yellow or red or purple or a rainbow of fruit flavors, for that matter). Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

Woohoo! As long as we're conscientious enough to determine what exactly is "enough good info." I'm sure people thought they had enough good info to know that the Earth was at the center of the universe at some point, but what happened after that only eroded their position. Among our many weaknesses as humans is our vanity. Ron, you're so on here, I'm getting a boner. I'd say that there are more factors to consider in what causes more arrests (greater law enforcement presence, for example), but all in all, I agree. And your conclusion is spot on. It's other conclusions some people try to derive from this ("blacks are more criminal," etc.) with which I take issue. Rock on!

Dude, where did I say that? Where did I even *imply* that? EDIT: Tag cleanup.

I'll quote from your reference: And *that's* exactly what I was saying about your statement. Good on you for posting references, and for being a Wikipedia user. Good point in that case. But there are other cases, however, in which we could easily assume jumper error if we didn't bother to look into other causal factors that came into play. That's all I'm saying: let's not oversimplify for the sake of simplicity; it'll bite us in the ass when we assume wrong. I dispute that. I'd be more with you if you said that *violent* crime is more likely to be committed in Compton, as violent crime has a much greater likelihood of being reported in one way or another (victim, witness, family member, hospital staff, etc.), and a significantly greater percentage of violent crime *is* reported in that area; but we just can't measure the committing of crimes in general, nor should we assume numbers and comparisons in that regard. I dispute that, too. In certain places, drawing attention to yourself is simply walking down the street, standing somewhere for a while, or any other relatively benign activity. Those places happen to be low-income minority neighborhoods, and I speak from personal experience. I don't, nor have I ever, used drugs. If I was, however, in possession, I'd have been more likely to get picked up for it in one of those neighborhoods than an affluent one whilst engaged in the exact same, perfectly legal behavior: no other crime than the possession. Like I said, there are more facets to explore. It's easy to throw one's (DISCLAIMER: not anyone in particular) hands up and say, "These damn niggers are just more criminal than we are, and that's just the truth!" But what is that kind of response, exactly, and how much credence should we give to it? I'm with you on the evidence of blacks committing more *violent* crimes -- now we're getting somewhere. And good on your for accepting that the evidence may be skewed. But... Are we required to make an assumption based on potentially skewed evidence? What is wrong with just saying that there isn't enough information at this point to draw a conclusion? Even chiming in *an opinion* based on what info one has, but acknowledging the uncertainty? Is it just a lack of humility, or is that too simple? Here's something else to consider. I'm shooting from the hip with no stats, but just using the concept as an example, so please take this with a grain of salt. Someone could say that in the last year, significantly more Muslims died at the hands of Christians than Christians died at the hands of Muslims. Let's just assume that this is true for a moment. Now, a statement like this is very likely to stir up some bias against Christians as a whole, isn't it? Now let's say we look into it more. Ah, yes, we see military action. Not between Christians and Muslims in general, but between very specific countries. So, now that we spent more time digging into the details, we can refine the statement a bit, can't we? And I'd bet that the revised statement wouldn't vilify Christians in general near as much as the original one did. Do you get where I'm going with this? Do you think there might be some other factors more worthy than race to measure in commonality amongst these violent criminals to establish a trend, perhaps making the race commonality more circumstantial? See how much bigger this can get in just a couple of minutes of consideration?

How on Earth do you arrive at that conclusion? And no, that is not what I'm saying at all. Not at all. Reflection? What does that mean? If you're stating that there's a relationship, then I'll agree with you. But if you try to imply that there's anything resembling a constant proportion between the two, that happens to span geographies, political boundaries, and cultures, then I'll vehemently disagree with you. You suppose wrong. Please go back and read what I wrote; I was pretty explicit about my point. To what truth are you referring? I've got absolutely no problems with the truth, man, but I *do* have problems with people using gappy logic, narrow-mindedness, and short-sightedness to come up with easy-to-digest reasons for said truth.

As a universal statement, that is incorrect, and often leads to a binary (0 or 1) view on things, which is a shame. The fact is that the nature of the answer depends entirely on the nature of the question. Some questions yield beautifully simple and elegant answers, whereas others have to take into account a number of factors. Take, for example, incident reports. The simplest answer to the majority of the, "Why did this happen?" questions is, "the jumper fucked up." If that's all we went by, though, we would never learn a damn thing from their mistakes, now would we? Further, the "simplest answer" may often only crawl up one or two links in a chain of causal events. And if you're looking for effective ways to solve problems, you want to have the most information about their causes as you can get your hands on. Now, to your "simple answer": We do not have data on crimes committed; we have data only on crimes reported and what happens with those (arrests, etc.). Consider how many times have you committed a crime (broken any law), compared to how many times you've been caught. This part is purely speculative, at best. What other factors can you think of that could influence this? Here's an example: Los Angeles. I can attest from personal experience that there is rampant drug usage in some of LA's most affluent areas. HUGE consumption, so much so I wonder how these people can function, really. Who deals is common knowledge, and there's just a general feeling of invincibility from getting caught. Hell, some of these people go weeks without ever seeing a cop. A short drive South, from the 101 to the 110, you'll find that things are just a bit different: a unit every few blocks, a constant feeling of paranoia... oh, and a population consisting primarily of impoverished black people. Why? Why is it that I'm probably more likely to get caught if I'm selling rock in Compton than if I'm selling blow in Hollywood Hills? Is it because drug use is higher there? Is it because there are more crimes committed [sic] there? Is it a black/white thing? A poor/rich thing? Is it a political thing? Cultural? Appearance? Oppression? Like I said, some questions do not have simple answers, and I'd call trying to shoehorn a simple answer to such a complex question a complete injustice. In this case, that includes both the, "Cuz the MAN is keeping is down," and the, "Blacks just commit more crimes," types of responses. There's more to it than that, and I think people should open their eyes just a bit more to see exactly that.

"If you wanted to reduce hate crimes against minorities, you could, if that was your sole purpose, you could kill every white baby and child in the South, and your hate crime rate would go down." How much validity as an intellectual debating point would you give that one?

IHOP does lick sack, for the most part. I just checked my ZIP, and all my favorite fancy schmancy eats are on the list. Hmm... what to do, what to do...

The one with the better food.