FeatherFall

Another thing that's needed, and doesn't seem to exist, is a framework for independent prosecutors investigating and charging bureaucrats, especially high level ones, who abuse the rules. For instance, I have read a recent rumor that the NSA is leaking the names of potential criminals they come across in their anti-terror surveillance to law enforcement agencies, including the DEA and IRS, who then falsify probable cause in the form of anonymous tips instead of mentioning the true source of the tip, to open up investigations. Then there is the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, the gunrunning scandal to Mexico, and several other situations in which independent investigations seem to be warranted, but aren't taking place.
 
I am hoping that, with the constant stream of these kinds of revelations and/or rumors, Congress will act to institute a full time prosecutorial office independent of the Justice Department, tasked specifically with investigating and prosecuting abuses within the executive branch.

Sourcing would have been a good idea, especially due to the downright criminal reporting of some media outlets. But I was treating this thread casually and don't really feel like going back and sourcing every specific I've mentioned. I will go as far as to source what I believe to be the #1 misrepresentation about this case, and of course I'll source any other specific claim if asked.

The most extreme form of the misrepresentation goes something like this, "Zimmerman disobeyed police order and refused to go back to his truck." Ari Armstrong, Diana Hsieh and Paul Hsieh recently perpetuated this misrepresentation to various degrees when they condemned Zimmerman for (paraphrasing), "following martin against the advice of dispatch." 

Audio
People are perpetuating this misrepresentation in the comments on the source itself! The video shows "911", but it may have been a non-emergency number that Zimmerman called.
 
Transcript


I understand that the statement of the operator could be construed as a request (or even advice) not to follow. But I don't think that's what it was. I think it was to cover the dispatcher in case somebody got shot. For instance, the statement prevents Martin's parents from suing dispatch for Martin's death. If Zimmerman had gone back to his truck and Martin proceeded to commit a crime, the city would have denied that this was a request to go back to the truck - in other words, the verbiage is such that nobody could claim a crime happened because dispatch requested Zimmerman refrain from intervention. Indeed, a request doesn't exist in the sentence; you have to infer one. 

I'd just like to remind everyone that you under no obligation to respond to posts that you don't find to be worthwhile. If you think someone has violated the forum rules, please use the report function; do not retaliate by violating the forum rules in turn. We are not online 24 hours a day to read every post.

Well I'm not down with the ad hominem, but I think this is something productive to focus on. Might be a good time to bring up the old thread Objectivist's impotent debate tactics 'Often times, when I raise an objection to something, the Objectivist will say something like, “You are being irrational,” “You are incapable of grasping reality,” “Your ideas are not consistent with reality” etc. Sometimes I’ll also get a real response included but that’s not guaranteed.' Of course this kind of thing is all too common, it's tantamount to sitting there telling the person that, in your mind, they're wrong, rather than simply explaining where you thing they go awry, and in a less confrontational manner.

It's common practice to overcharge someone in the hopes that they admit to a lesser charge. It also seems to be this prosecution's goal to present the jury with as many severe charges as possible so they convict on the lesser manslaughter charge as a "compromise." I'd be interested to hear a principled argument defending these practices.

Objectivism is against the government's monopoly on the use of force. It merely advocates for the government's monopoly on the use of retaliatory force.

No. That's not actually what women want. In fact, it sucks for women that men who would otherwise have been good friends can't seem to get over the denial of their advances, and then tuck their tail between their legs and severe bridges and are never seen from again. 
 
Yes. If you can't seem to get over your "love" for the girl, then it's probably best to not be a creeper and to stay away from her. But here's a better suggestion: Don't, for cripes' sake, fall in love so easily, for people who you don't know very well to begin with. Just be friends -- actual, real friends. If real love is there, then it will be mutual and you both will know it and grow into it. But it's really sad that guys destroy good friendships because they "fall" into love, get denied, and end the relationship. All it demonstrates is that your "friendship" wasn't real in the first place. It was a ruse. It was contingent on some hope that she would be attracted to you, and when you finally accept that she's not, your true colors are shown -- your friendship was a facade.
 
That's what women hate. And if that's what's really going on, then sure, do women a favor an stay away from them.
 
Then you steam and fume over those mean girls, when in reality you should do some work on yourself.

I'd prefer not to jump into this topic with both feet, but just to clarify: Arab is not synonymous with Muslim. Muhammad here is not expressing equality among religions or religious followers, but ethnicities.

Actually, this kind of statement could fit easily within the "maneuvering" under discussion, as, in some senses, it opens up the whole world for Islam's eventual spread. Christianity needed to come to a similar conclusion as it developed, as to whether Christ's message was for the Jews alone, or also for the Gentiles.

Sigh. And while Objectivists here argue about arcane laws that have no actual bearing on our everyday lives, there's an absolute emergency going on that needs our attention going on in another forum. Focus on real issues that curtail real freedom people!

It looks to me like it could be both a protest and the first steps, not to a return to a gold standard, but to a system of competing currencies.

Ah! So, you mentioned their advice in the OP because that too was for muppets to ignore!I strongly adivse you to come back to this dimension. I know crows love to shit on straw-men, but there's reality on this side of the veil.

M, I share the concern that the pie chart may make no distinction between arson-type terrorism, attacking state/governmental targets, and the intentional mass-murder of civilians. On the other hand, I don't entirely agree with what I'll call the "Epstein position" (I know that many others have expressed this idea, but he is the latest popular Objectivist to be referenced in this thread, so...).

All religions venerate the afterlife; sometimes just a little more than the real world, sometimes infinitely so. This is a bad ethical premise. When consistently followed, it causes very bad things. But following any non-life based standard of value is bad. The epistemological error of the "Epstein position" is a form of the fallacy of composition - the position identifies this singular ethical premise as the essence of all "brands" of Islam. Some versions of the position go further and say that this interpretation of Islam is actually some sort of ubertheology that all other religions aspire to. This is an error, but I don't regard this as an egregious error, for reasons I am about to explain.

The metaphysical nonsense involved in religion prevents it from achieving ethical consistency. Mystic metaphysics literally can't be used to construct a set of premises which can be consistently followed. The result is that each religion has a suite of competing ethical premises. Of course, premature death is the result of failing to consistently follow ethical premises based on accurate metaphysical assumptions. So to varying extent, every religion will lead to earlier death or valueless life. But again, it is a category error to even say that the essence of religious/mystical ethics is death; it would be more accurate to say that the essence of religious ethics is metaphysical contradiction.

Identifying essential differences between religions becomes a process of identifying which premises are held more consistently. Islamic supremacists like the Tsarnaev brothers are death cultists. They want rewards they believe will come at the moment of death, and the way they think they will achieve those rewards is by bringing death to other people. This is not that different from people like Adam Lanza, who want to bring death to other people and know that their own death will swiftly follow. The ethical outcomes are essentially the same; both could be called death worshipers. But the metaphysical premises are different; one bases his ethics on a metaphysical contradiction, the other on no metaphysical premise at all. Contrast these kinds of death worship with someone who believes they will gain rewards at the moment of death by "bringing light into this world" or by feeding the poor or by taking a bullet to protect a child.

If you accept that the essence of religious ethics is metaphysical contradiction, you can begin to identify which premises are in greater conflict with life as the standard of value. You now have a useful tool to make meaningful distinctions between Islamic supremacist death cults, Islamic totalitarians, Islamic reformists, Saalafi's, Sufi's, Wahabi's, etc. These are different religions based on different premises that hold different ethical outcomes, and the "Epstein position" fails to account for them. The only unity between these competing forms of Islam is their own followers' reluctance to expressly differentiate themselves from each other.

2046, it sounds like he's going a step further and saying anarchy not only breeds subjective applications of force, but that it also goes a step further and disproportionately affects virtuous people. That last bit does sound like a non sequitur to me.

Aleph, I suggest you let the Muslims hash that argument out. Islam cannot be divorced from how it is practiced. So if someone within Islam is trying to reform how it is practiced, to make it benign and non-political, you'd do well to get out of his way if you can't help him.

I created it using the methods that I mentioned in the first post: orthographic masking, projection and in-camera masking, negative/positive film alignment, multiple exposures, time exposures, color, diffusion and distortion filters, and selective dodging and burning.
 
The petals are just a blast of light shot through a very wide lens on chrome film, and then reshot as double exposures at severe angles onto another piece of chrome film. I put that on a light table and reshot it eight times while rotating the camera 45 degrees between each exposure. I did that twice so as to get two sets of eight. I then made a high-contrast negative and a high contrast positive copy of those two eight-set chromes so that I would have a knock-out (the high-contrast positive) and highlight/shadow plate, which was created by taking slightly unfocused shots on chrome of the high-contrast negative copies.
 
I then sandwiched the second eight-set chrome with the unfocused shadow chrome from the first eight-set, as well as with second eight-set's knock-out, and I punched the entire sandwich with holes to match registration pins (a method of aligning multiple exposures on a light table). I exposed that onto a new piece of chrome, then covered the sandwich with the shadow chrome made from the first eight-set's high-contrast copy, slid it slightly upward, and then exposed the new chrome once again to achieve the highlights. I removed that sandwich from the light table and repeated the same double exposure process with the first eight-set sandwiched with its knock-out positive.
 
The flower's anther was created pretty much in the same way, but it began with two exposures of light on very grainy film which was then reshot on high-contrast film.
 
The stem was just a time exposure streak made by a random panning of the camera while aimed at a light.
 
Once I had the petals on a chrome, the stem on another, and the anther on another, I combined all three using the sandwich/knockout method described above, along with additional pops of the strobe and colored gels to achieve the coloration as well as the background fade. Each plate exposure on this final chrome also had an accompanying diffusion exposure, which was a pop of the strobes with a steel-wool scratched piece of glass placed over the lens.
 
J

If all it is is paying someone to strip on camera, then it's not like prostitution, it's like softcore porn or going to a strip club. It's looking at a beautiful stranger naked.
 
The main reason why prostitution (as it is usually practiced) is a bad thing is because it divorces sex (a physical and emotional act) from emotion and from values (at least on the part of the prostitute - the client is of course free to allow himself to be convinced that there are emotions involved, and that's also a problem). Finally, the fact that it's illegal allows for the easy victimization of sex workers.
 
So long as you don't engage in the same kind of evasion (you don't treat the person on the other end of the camera as a sex partner), there's nothing immoral about looking at a naked woman. You should also make sure that the site you're using is a legal establishment, and the women on the other end of the camera are in a country that legalized and polices their porn industry.
 
P.S. Please note that I don't have any personal experience with prostitution. While I am confident about what I said (that my description of prostitution is usually true), I can't say that it is always true, and therefor I can't provide you with a reason why prostitution would always be wrong. But, so long as you can have sex with a real, emotionally involved partner, seeking out prostitutes is definitely always immoral. 
 
If you can't have a real partner, for objective reasons, then, under certain conditions, a prostitute might be a moral way to achieve greater physical pleasure than just masturbation. Again, I have never tried having sex without emotional involvement, and I'm not convinced that it's even possible, but I won't tell someone else to never try it.
 
If anyone ever tried it, please let me know how it went. It's hard to find people who had this experience and are at the same time equipped to understand what the difference is between real sex and just plain physical contact.

What do you mean? - i.e. if you didn't have this fancy phrase "moral status," how would you have worded your question?  In my observation it's usually a way of asking "do I have Rand's permission to do this?"  In my further observation, if you have to ask the answer is virtually always no.
 
One feature that this case and prostitution have in common is that they evoke a misunderstanding of what Rand said.  It wasn't "you shouldn't" but rather, "if you've gone to the effort of creating a good character you won't be interested."  My own response in either case would be that I don't condemn the act, but neither do I admire somebody for wanting it.
 
As a preliminary exercise, try rephrasing your question without any Objectivist jargon.

IntellectualAmmo,

You've said human sex can only occur between a man and a woman. You've also shown some knowledge about Objectivism's take on sex. You've basically offered two descriptions:

1)Sex is, physically speaking, a penis penetrating a vagina and nothing else.
2)Sex is the act of bringing love into reality.

Now, which one hits closer to the definition? Biologically speaking, I'd say #1 - so long as the act culminates in conception... But we've already dispensed with baby-making as the purpose of sex; we certainly can't use it to deduce the second statement.

So what if we're not talking about making babies, but rather the role of sex in the life of a rational being? Which statement is closer to the definition of sex? I think the answer is clearly #2. Working from that description, can you please show me (step by step) how you deduce that penile penetration of the vagina is necessary?
 
Edit: I ask because if one statement implies the other, you should be able to induce or deduce freely between them. So far you've failed to show the connection from 1 to 2. Maybe you'll have better luck showing the connection from 2 to 1.

Homosexuals can only be said to be "sexually incompatible" if you are talking about reproduction. But we've already dispensed with the myth that sex is primarily about reproduction. I'll continue to take your silence on that point as acceptance of it.

The only sexual compatibility that matters is a mutual combination of sexual arousal, respect and admiration. Fellating a different species couldn't fulfill  the purpose of reifying a mutual respect and admiration. Fellating a human being can serve that purpose, as evidenced by heterosexual couples. To  my  knowledge, men and women have the same mouths. Ergo, homosexuals can reify respect and admiration through fellatio.

It seems that your task, if you disagree, is to show why penis-vagina penetration is necessary to reify love. I'm willing to listen to that argument.

This seems like a non-sequitur to me. The stimulation of sex organs is precisely the point of sexual intercourse, 9 times out of 10. This serves the life-affirming spiritual purpose of reifying the respect and admiration that two people have for each other. This is the fundamental purpose of sex to most people. Can you please explain why people with matching sex organs can't do this?

And please consider that you can't magic away the feelings of sexual attraction that gay people have for each other. You're treating such concretes as abstract ideas that can be redefined. They can't; they are very real things of chemistry, physics, mind and spirit. This hormonal attraction is a requirement of any appropriate sexual encounter; homosexual attraction can and does fulfill this requirement.

What kind of ought is implied by the "is" of homosexual male or homosexual female?
You are taking male and female as observations of "is". Fair enough.
However, you're implicitly saying that "homosexual male" is not an "is".
What about "fat male", or "thin male" or "black male"... surely you see that these are "is"-es, and they each imply some type of "ought".

But they are the trapppings of power this republic adopted , from the very government with which it broke. Off with their robes!!

That is pretty far-fetched. A lot of Democrats do not like Obama, and think he's pretty incompetent. Clinton was and is far more popular. A retired Obama is unlikely to have more impact than a retired Clinton. And, Obama already has his Nobel prize ... so how's he going to sink lower?

This question of when to nuke is not a philosophical question, it is a military strategy question which should be left to the military sciences. 
 
The philosophical principle is that a nation defending itself must do whatever is necessary to defeat the enemy. "Whatever is necessary" means different things in different contexts. In the context of Grenada 1980 (?) it means you send in one squad of marines. In the context of Japan 1945 you nuke them until they relent.
 
There are several good threads discussing these questions in which I have participated in the past. This one entitled "Pre-emptive War: Should we nuke Tehran?" is quite long but good. The very last post is by me and addresses the question of whether we could just assassinate the leaders of an aggressive country.
 
This one is entitled "In Our Name"? and is very good and short, only two pages. It addresses the issue of the differing contexts of semi-free countries versus aggressive ones.

the rules or laws of evidence are pretty strict; either something is or it is not.
there is always proof of the attributes of a thing(existent)  , there is no reason to deny god simply because there is no reason to postulate god