| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 2008/7/2-6 [Politics/Domestic/California, Politics/Domestic/Crime] UID:50446 Activity:kinda low |
7/2 Why do people CCW or open carry? I mean, in a place such as
Cupertino or Sausalito, wouldn't you get more disturbances out and
hastle from open carry than the minute, less than lottery chance
that you'll heorically save someone from danger?
\_ Let's see. If you are a Mormon with Asperger's syndrome, you'll
feel that you're a lot smarter and better and more righteous
than everyone else and that no one can be trusted. In addition,
if you live in Chico, you gotta protect yourself because
everyone else is a nutcase -- they have very different
"values" and beliefs that you have. So in that respect, it
totally makes sense to carry a weapon.
\_ It's worth it so you can finally feel like a man again.
\_ Is it worth even responding to this crap?
\_ Wait, there really is some other reason? Let me guess, you
are just waiting for the armed revolution to start so you can
go shoot some cops, and it would really suck if you had to go
home first casue someone else might have gotten them all?
\_ My right to protect myself and my property is
constitutionally protected. Your interpretation is
bizarre.
\_ But the right to protect your right to protect yourself
and your property is not constitutionally protected.
I.e. the constitution can be changed by votes.
\_ do you really go to UC Berkeley?
\_ Yes I did. Do you?
\_ It has been many years since I took crim law, but
iirc, the US Constitution does not require the states
to provide any defenses to the accused, i.e. self-
defense, defense of of others, and defense of
property are all defense provided by state law and
are constitutionally protected, if at all, by state
constitutions. So, in one sense, your statement is
probably correct.
In the context of this discussion, I assume that you
are referring to 2d amendment personal right(s) to
keep and bear arms. And I assume that you mean that
the constitution can be changed via the amendment
process. If so, I think that your statement is only
true in a very technical sense because the amendment
process operates as designed and prevents any drastic
changes from being made to the constitution. We have
only used the process 27 times and the 27th amendment
was pending was over 200 years. This suggests that
the 2d amendment personal rights can considered
immutable because amending the constitution to remove
the 2d is about as likely as an armed revolution to
to overthrow the republic.
\_ It's really easy. The EARLIER number amendment
the less likely you can challenge it as time
goes on.
\_ If you are so afraid of the world you can't wander
the mean streets of Cupertino without packing lethal
force you are laughbly pathetic, constituationally
protected or not.
\_ I keep a flashlight on my keychain as well. Does
that make me afraid of my own shadow?
\_ Do you keep the flashlight around so that if
some scary dark looking person comes near you
you can shove it in their eyeball while shouting
"semper fi motherfucker!"
\_ Do you do that with your car instead of riding
on the bus?
\_ So you don't drive?
\_ I sure don't keep a car in my pants in order to
keep my dream of getting to run over some dangerous
looking feller in the name of justice alive.
\_ If you have to rely on someone else to protect you,
you're pathetic.
\_ See, unlike you I'm not afraid of my shadow, so
I don't need to have a gun around as a security
blanket.
\_ Dude, you don't know what it is like on the mean streets of
Cupertino. Jackbooted, BMW-riding Cupertino motorcycle cops
routinely use their gestapo tactics to ticket jay-walking
pedestrians who are just trying to save a few minutes on their
walk to TapX or I Heart Yogurt. Open carry is all that keeps
the man at bay.
\_ OpenCarry Yogurt! |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Industry/Startup] UID:50447 Activity:nil |
7/2 "Oil is making millionaires in North Dakota - Yahoo! News:"
http://www.csua.org/u/lui
This is better than stock options and IPO, man. |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Computer/SW/WWW/Browsers] UID:50448 Activity:nil |
7/2 After Firefox 3.0, now we have Firefox 2.0.0.15. |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:50449 Activity:nil 85%like:50443 |
7/1 Who's smearing whom?
http://preview.tinyurl.com/56u2nx [politico]
\_ This article is really out to lunch. The smears of Obama are
everywhere. There are whole websites devoted to proving
that he's a gay racist from Indonesia who studied in a Madrassa,
and there are armies of freepers feeding the rumor mills. See
the above WaPo article for more. Just because "nobody with the
McCain campaign" is openly calling him a Muslim doesn't change the
fact that a large % of Americans now fervently believe this, and
are seemingly oblivious to the true fact of the matter. Obama
not be Swift-boated, because the fringe lunatics will do it for
them.
\_ So is being called a Muslim a smear?
\_ Of course not. It happens to be untrue. If someone were to
say that John McCain is homosexual, would that be a smear? |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Politics/Domestic/California, Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:50450 Activity:moderate |
7/2 Christopher Hitchens on Waterboarding: "Believe me, it's torture."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/02/humanrights.usa
\_ Gee, how nice of him to change his mind now. Rats. Ships.
Sinking.
\_ As much as I dislike Christopher Hitchens, it seems hard to
fault him for this. He had the courage to back up his claim
that waterboarding wasn't torture by trying it out, and then
(having learned what it was like) he admitted he'd been wrong.
I wish everyone was so principled.
\_ 4 years too late... I don't have much sympathy for anyone
who defended torture as strongly as that man did.
\_ FLIP FLOPPER!
\_ And why should I care what he thinks?
\_ Because he has been a tireless defender of the technique as not
being torture and has now been convinced, by experience, that it
is. If you believe that it is not, perhaps you should try it out
yourself.
\_ Torture is any experience so horrible that no-one would consider
trying it out simply for the purpose of writing a Vanity Fair
article about what it's like.
http://sweasel.com/archives/1269
\_ If he'd thought it was torture before he experienced it, he
would not have tried it out. Now that he's experienced it, he
recognizes it as torture and would not do it again.
\_ Yah, see here's the thing, torture is something that you know
you wouldn't try it even before you try it.
\- i think that is true for "medieval" type
torture [gouging out eyeballs], and highly
likely for modern "clinical" pain-inducing
torture [electric wire between teeth] but
i dont think it is necessarily possibly to
i dont think it is necessarily possible to
know the effects of things like sleep deprivation,
and psychological/terror oriented approaches such
as mock executions [russian roulette style, fake
firing squad, blind folded and dropped from
firing squad, blindfolded and dropped from
helicopter etc] until you've "been there/done that".
anyway, i thought this was a settled issue given
that all the "warriors" [mccain etc] said "wboaring
\_ Not by a long shot. Quite a few
military members said *they'd* been
waterboarded, and said they had no
problem with us doing it to others.
\- who is a "military member" who
has said "it's ok if somebody
waterboards US troops when
captured".
is totally clearly over the line" and it was only
chickhawks [bush, cheney, limbaugh] either saying
it wasnt clear or it was like frat hazing.
i was was captured and you said you were going to
if was was captured and you said you were going to
put me in the iron maiden, i'd talk right way.
if you threatened to waterboard me, i might go
for a minute or two. --psb
\_ McCain voted to support waterboarding. -tom
\_ I missed that. A point in his favor. -emarkp
\_ I'm sorry, "emarkp", but I
think you need some introspection on
whether you're serious about your
religion and whether your support of
torture is really consistent with
that.
\_ Why the quotes? It really is me, and I
find it laughable when someone else tells
me what my religion should be.
Especially the prolific atheist
relgion-haters here (though I obviously I
don't know if you're one of them).
-emarkp
\_ The quotes were simply to open
the door to the idea that someone
was masquerading as you to make
you look bad. Now I'm forced to
go with the person below: your
"religion" is a hollow sanctimonious
shell over your hateful and vile
core.
\_ yeah, it's easy as an atheist to
underestimate the ability of
religious people to rationalize
whatever it is they want to do
or believe. -tom
\_ You should be careful trying to
apply your childish understand of
something to a grown-up discussion.
-emarkp
\_ You're right, no one can tell you
what your religion is or should be.
But thanks to threads like this one
we know that whatever your beliefs
are, they serve as little more than
a hollow sanctimonious shell over
your hateful and vile core.
\_ you're an idiot.
\_ I don't understand, shouldn't you be
calling him evil rather than stupid? This
looks like a clear values call. -- ilyas
\_ and anyone disagreeing with your opinion
is an idiot. Great logic, comrade! Welcome
to People's Republic of California.
\_ No, I am tom! Do not anger me!
\_ I disagree with people who are not
idiots all the time. But *you* are
an idiot. -tom
\_ I believe you are confusing torture with deterrents.
\_http://home.lbl.gov:8080/~psb/Articles/Politics/Schelling.q
\_ I wouldn't try waterboarding, but I'm not a fucking
idiot like Christopher Hitchens. -tom |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Reference/BayArea] UID:50451 Activity:nil |
7/2 i love oakland
\_ http://www.oaklandish.org
\_ Next season of The Wire will be in Oakland.
\_ sure looks that way! I like how the 'city administrator'
told everyone she was going to postpone her retirement
at the end of this month to clear her name.
\_ It will be called "The Probe". Brother Mouzone will
be coming west. |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Politics/Domestic/Abortion, Health/Women] UID:50452 Activity:moderate |
7/2 Not a troll: What's the best way to get to a Family Planning
specialist, for abortion? The website for my health care (PPO)
doesn't seem to point anywhere to abortion. Is Planned
Parenthood a good place for this sort of thing, or is it better
for teenagers?
\_ go to Planned Parenthood. there you go.
\_ My wife once got an early-term abortion from her OB/GYN.
\_ I see, was it easier/tougher than Planned Parenthood?
Do they ask a lot of questions and make it even more
difficult than it is now? What was your occassian? Thanks
PLEASE help out.
\_ We didn't try Planned Parenthood. The OB asked a lot of
questions, but they were all medical. She didn't ask any
ethical or moral questions at all like "Why do you decide to
do this?" or "Are you emotionally ready?", or say anything
like "Just call us to cancel the appointment if you change
your mind." which would hint something. The occasion was that
she got pregnant between our engagement and our wedding, which
was way too early for us to have kids. We ended up having our
first kid 4 years into the marriage as planned.
was too early for us to have kids. We ended up having our
first kid 4 years into the marriage.
\_ THANK YOU we're in the EXACT same situation. We just
went to an obgyn and she gave us a lot of information
and time to think about it. She did NOT give us any
trouble or her bias, just information. It was very very
professional and she was very very understanding and
said we have a lot of time to think about it since
it's still really early. Did you do the chemical or
surgery and why? We're leaning towards the chemical
method.
\_ Any particular reason you morons didn't use birth
control if you don't want a baby?
\_ Dude, give it a rest. Maybe the condom broke,
you don't know.
\_ I don't. That's why I asked. |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Politics/Domestic/911, Computer/SW/Security] UID:50453 Activity:kinda low |
7/2 On the torture debate (or maybe just flame fest), the claim that
torture doesn't work is true most of the time but untrue some of the
time. Most of the reasoning for pro-torture positions doesn't make
sense to me, I feel like its not logical to give support to something
that doesn't produce results while the same time being oppressive.
The one thing I think I can see is that I make a decision that I
would rather have a little less security to have more human rights/
civil liberties. When Patrick Henry said "Give me liberty of give me
death" he didn't mean unless he might get hurt. I can understand
that if you won't tolerate any threat to your personal security (at
least any threat outside of our government) it would be in your best
interest to want them to torture anyone they thought might be involved
in terrorism. But to me that seems like a cowardly approach, a
minimal risk to yourself is worth the gain in liberty for all. Its
easy to see that deaths from terrorism << torture/government repress-
ion. -mrauser
\- the ticking time bomb scenario has long been "the standard"
classroom hypo after THE TROLLY PROBLEM for the tension between
UTILITARIAN theories [cost-benefit analysis] and DEONTOLOGICAL
theories [torture is wrong. the exact reason it is wrong depends
on the flavor of deontology, but probably "the standard" again
is the kantian one but maybe simpler to understand is the RDWORKIN
"RIGHTS AS TRUMPS" view ... mostly this is beyond the scope of a
motd discussion]. but the "i only care about me" sort of begs
the question ... since a core question of moral philosophy is
"what do we own other" and you're pretty much saying "nothing"
"what do we owe others" and you're pretty much saying "nothing"
in that "degenerate" case. EGOISM may be an apt description of a
lot of people, but it's not really a philosophy [although i
suppose maybe FWNIETZSCHE might have spun it into one, but i am
not really an expert on FWN ... and that is also beyond the
scope of the motd]. here is a problem with the "results
oriented" view: do you think it would be categorically wrong
to say torture a family member of the terrorist ... say KSM's
wife and kids ... if that would be a highly effective way of
producing results. if you want "the standard" critiques of
utilitarianism, see BERNARD WILLIAMS [formerly UCB Dept Philosophy,
now dead] and AMARTYA SEN ... at the core, utilitariamsism
"does take persons/rights seriously. Williams also has a very
influential critique of deontology, but that may be a little
hard to follow.
\_ I've heard of the ticking time bomb, and its pretty easy to feel
saying you would torture the guy, because in this magical fantasy
he is directly responsible for the bomb being there and you know
that there must be a bomb so there is a perverse justice in
torturing him to make him tell you. But as a real world example,
it holds no water, because how often do you KNOW that there is
a threat and the person in front of you has specific knowledge
of it. You torture without this information, in the hopes of
getting it. Another scenario, say a terrorist kidnaps someone's
family and then tells that person where they put a bomb in a
building, but they tell that person if they tell the authorities
they will kill thier family. So do you torture a complete
innocent who has a self interest in not telling you the info?
Here is a scenario which is nearly as plausible as the ticking
time bomb, but I don't think anyone could feel good about either
option. The problem to me is that torture is used in ambigious
situations with a presumed guilt or presumed having of the info.
I think that because torture can really never be used with
certainty, it should never be used at all. Plus, there is a
strong argument that it leads to false confessions and false in-
formation just as long as it leads to good ones. -mrauser
\_ look up "a fortiori"
\_ Your writing is only partially intelligible. What was your
"i only care about me" and "what do we own other" sentence
referring to? |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Uncategorized] UID:50454 Activity:nil |
7/2 motd getting hella laid guy here. i just want to sleep.
\_ what's going on? |