Fine, refund them all property taxes tied in any way to public education. You can't force them to pay for an education system they're denied access to because of their wrongheaded, stupid beliefs. Or better yet, have the tax money follow the kid so that every parent can actually choose where their child is schooled. That way everyone wins because schools have to compete with one another to get the money from the kids. Hell, even some of the Europeans have figured this out already.

In terms of unvaccinated kids, you'll likely see a concentration of them in a small subset of schools that allow them to attend and you'll also likely see disease after preventable disease make its way through those schools' halls. Maybe after the population there is decimated once or twice, some of those morons will wake up and start vaccinating. Or not; their choice. The diseases are all from nature and refusing to use the tools available to keep nature at bay should be every person's choice for themselves and their kids.

Of course, a government strapping citizens to a gurney and jamming needles into their arms to inject them with drugs will certainly breed the kind of independent thinking and acting individuals who comprise a healthy democratic state. What could go wrong?

This is, frankly, every bit as stupid a thought process as not getting your kids vaccinated because some guy somewhere said maybe it might be harmful (in the face of decades of blatantly obvious evidence that it saves tremendous numbers of people). Why? Because YOU AREN'T A THREAT SIMPLY BY THE NATURE OF YOUR EXISTENCE ALONE. Vaccines are great tools of modern medicine that are saving huge numbers of people from diseases. But the diseases ALL COME FROM NATURE. They're PART OF THE NATURAL FUCKING WORLD and THAT is where the "threat" is coming from! If you don't want to live under that threat, remove yourself from the natural world.

I think people who don't get themselves or their kids vaccinated against preventable, dangerous diseases are idiots because there's nearly no downside to doing that. However, they aren't increasing any threat toward anyone. They're simply not acting to DECREASE the threat which is being posed by the natural world. There's a huge difference. Now, are the odds increased that an individual who cannot receive a vaccination will contracted a the disease inoculated against by that vaccine if those in regular contact with them are unvaccinated? Yes. But if 0% of the people around them get the vaccine, their level of threat is EQUAL to the level of threat in the NATURAL WORLD. As the people around them get vaccinated, the level of threat drops.

To be as crystal clear as possible, here's the difference between increasing the level of threat and not acting to decrease it:

If I purposely inject myself with active Influenza, get sick, and then walk through an airport coughing on people, I am increasing the level of Influenza threat

If I inject you with active Influenza, I'm increasing the level of Influenza threat

If I simply don't get a Flu vaccine, I'm not increasing anything; the threat was already there. I'm simply not acting to decrease that threat to myself or others.

Why do I care about the difference? Because it's horseshit to accuse these idiots of being a threat. The fact that they're acting like morons is no excuse for everyone else doing the same.

Why? Because you demand it? Let the tax dollars used to educate children follow the children to any reasonable education facility and this whole debate goes away. The fact that everyone is forced to fund some of the most garbage public schools in the modern world is the problem. Hell, even some of the Europeans have choice in education. Let the money follow the kids and this whole problem goes away. All these idiots who aren't getting their kids vaccinated can concentrate on some private institution run by idiots who let them all congregate there and then maybe when some easily preventable disease wipes out half that school's population, some of those morons will take the hint.

Why would there be little reason to think that? Aside from all the expenses of homeschooling itself (books, materials, etc - both for parents and students), there's also the loss of income from at least one parent (when there even are two) not working. That can easily be half the household income gone, plus the expenses, and they still have to pay the taxes. And in a single parent household, what's the option? Live 100% on public assistance all the time?

The poster above hit the nail on the head: "That might be a reasonable compromise if every parent had a real choice where they send their kids to school. Governments take thousands in school taxes, then tell you that if you don't want to send your kids to their public school that you'll have to send thousands more to a private one."

That right there is the problem. If they had a choice, this would all be moot. Dumbasses who refuse to vaccinate their kids couple simply send them elsewhere with little or no cost. As it stands, if you're stupid enough to honestly believe vaccines will damage your child, your options come down to bending to the will of the state that you inject poison into your child or lose half/all of your household income and try to educate them yourself.

But fuck these assholes. Fuck all of them; every one of them who voted for this shit. Fuck them regardless of their party or their stances on other issues, or their charity work, or their stupid kids, or their veteran status. Fuck 'em. Burn in Hell you pieces of shit.

I'll provide an example I gave in another post. If the law prohibits minors gambling at the horse track, but Little Johnny stands right there listing off bets to an adult who parrots those bets to the track employee taking bets, then hands the money for those bets to the adult who hands it to the track employee, the law is clearly and obviously being circumvented and the entire intent of the law undermined by a simple loophole. (this actually works by the way, did it for years as a teen) Is this a capital crime that needs huge resources dumped into it? No, but ignoring it breeds disrespect for the law.

Perhaps another example. Let's assume there's a declaration requirement when entering the US which states that you have to declare when they're entering the US with cash in excess of $10,000 USD in value. Now let's say John Smith withdraws $50k from his bank, then flies to the US, where it's discovered that he, his wife, and each of his three young children each have $9,980 on their person. Then the law states that deposits in excess of $10,000 into US financial institutions must be reported, but John Smith fills out 5 separate deposit slips for $9,980 each. These are easy enough to cover in the legislation, you say. Sure, but there are 50 permutations of this you can come up with without getting creative. Then another 50 when you start thinking harder. Then another 100 when you involved a lawyer. And another 1,000 when you involve a creative lawyer. And in a week, you'll find another hundred ways to work around the letter of the law.

The point is that while I agree poorly written legislation is a problem and one that should be addressed, no legislation can ever be written in such a way that its intent cannot be undermined by a motivated individual with an agenda. If we begin with the idea that the intent of the law is valid, just, and good policy, we must endeavor to do all we can to keep obvious circumvention attempts at bay. The idea that one can easily violate the spirit of the law by "rules lawyering" the words and letters within it is just absurd. It's how you end up with ridiculous things like "it depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

Language is an imprecise means of conveying ideas. The intent of a law should be clearly defined and all attempts to violate that intent punishable in the same fashion. Anything less makes the whole thing a stupid game and the law ought to be above that.

And societies based on the rule of law only work when people largely understand the rules to be fair and applicable to all. The "some animals are more equal than others" crap doesn't fly for long in a mature modern democracy.

I think this is where we get into "clear and obvious". For example, if the law prohibits minors gambling at the horse track, but Little Johnny stands right there listing off bets to an adult who parrots those bets to the track employee taking bets, then hands the money for those bets to the adult who hands it to the track employee, the law is clearly and obviously being circumvented and the entire intent of the law undermined by a simple loophole. (this actually works by the way, did it for years as a teen) Is this a capital crime that needs huge resources dumped into it? No, but ignoring it breeds disrespect for the law.

I agree there are plenty of cases where this would not be a preferable addition to the law due to its potentially chilling effect on normal, legal activities. So in those cases, don't enact this kind of provision. In fact, you could even apply this just to laws that specifically govern the actions of government entities and employees in the commission of their official duties. The point is to ensure that legal games don't undermine the protections built into the law for all citizens. In fact, I think legislators should be one of the prime targets of this kind of legislation; when they pass laws that clearly and obviously violate the rights of citizens, they should face stiff legal penalties up to and including prison.

Gaming companies have dealt with issues like this for many years whereby players will attempt to engage in "rules lawyering" to get around the letter of the game's rules in order to exploit loopholes to essentially cheat to win. Game companies dealt with that by including a catch-all to simply say that if what you're doing is clearly and obviously designed to bypass the rules or exploit loopholes to gain an unfair or unintended advantage, you get punished.

Legislatures could learn a lesson from this. For each law written, write in a catch-all such that clear and obvious attempts to circumvent the law by exploiting loopholes in the wording brings about similar or the same penalties as violating the law itself. For laws designed to control groups, such as intelligence services, ensure that everyone involved bears the punishment of violating the law. In other words, get the guy who ordered it, the guy(s) who disseminated the orders, and everyone who carried out the orders. Then also include strong whistleblower protections and rewards for reporting the worst abuses. When everyone from the top of the organization to the bottom has their ass on the line and when enough carrots are dangled in front of the guys doing the grunt work, stuff like that will unravel in a hurry. I love my job for numerous reasons. Would I risk 20 years in prison for it if the higher-ups decided to start doing illegal stuff? Not a chance.

To be fair, South Africa is now the rape capital of the world.

Which is not to say that a system of racial oppression was to thank for keeping rape down, but rather to point out that strict policing can be associated with safer streets.

As some others have said in more colorful ways, being a good cop means doing everything you can under the law to get bad cops off the street. Bad cops doesn't just mean those taking bribes, planting evidence, etc. Bad cops includes police officers who unnecessarily approach situations with undue aggression and who unnecessarily escalate situations. I understand that much of an officer's interactions are either with people who aren't at their best or are with people who are just pain rotten to the core, but if that drives them into a pattern of cynicism and aggression not warranted by the situation, they can either self-report and get behind a desk and get counseling until their head gets back to a better place or they're bad cops.

I'm a law-abiding citizen. Minus some exceeding the posted speed limit here and there, I'm not causing trouble. I also happen to work late quite a bit, which has led to numerous interactions with the police. Nearly all of those have been completely reasonable where everyone was decent and the situation was handled without any issue (usually just a "why are you here at [late time]?" followed up with a reasonable explanation, maybe running plates, in and out in 3 minutes kind of thing). In a very small number of cases, I was met by an adrenaline-pumped idiot who was very obviously itching to rip me out of the car and beat the Hell out of me. I've been berated and goaded by a cop who was doing everything he could to escalate the situation to where he could take stronger action. As I said, it's a very tiny number of issues out of all the times I've had contact with officers and I've always kept my cool and been in the right to the point where it didn't turn into anything. But all it would take is one of those adrenaline-pumped alpha assholes deciding I looked at him wrong and but for a camera recording the incident, he could very easily write up the report such that I was the aggressor and was threatening toward him and resisted arrest, thereby justifying any injuries. With that report and the word of the sworn officer, I end up with a criminal record and losing everything I've earned in life.

And that's why it doesn't matter if there are 99 good cops for every one bad cop. Because that one bad cop can ruin so many peoples' lives. We as citizens are second-class when we file a report or step into a court room trying to stop a bad cop doing bad stuff. What's really needed are for all those cops who are decent people to start standing up against the ones who aren't, start calling them on their bullshit, start reporting them at work, and start testifying on behalf of people who are wronged by them. I understand that that hyper-aggressive adrenaline junky alpha asshole is great to have by your side when you're under fire, but you have a duty and a responsibility to either see that he gets right in the head or see that he finds a new profession where he doesn't have any legal authority. The more you protect assholes like that, the more of them you'll find around you and the more the citizens in your community will distrust and even hate the police.

I support the good cops out there trying to help good and decent people and do the right thing. As for the bad cops out for a thrill? Well at the very very least, I want them off the streets and getting help. Stop protecting them. Stop protecting people who protect them.

Now that's just unfair. Long term storage costs for nuclear "waste" only exist because the government doesn't allow for the reprocessing of perfectly good fuel. If they did, we'd be more like France, where the total final long-term waste of a family of four's entire lifetime fits in a soda can. And as all the usable energy has been removed from it, it actually is waste, meaning there's no energy radiating from it and no danger from it. At which point, those costs look vastly easier to manage and all subsidies can come off with virtually no impact to costs.

Government created a problem (basically a tax) by disallowing the reuse of perfectly good fuel. It then partially solved the problem it created by generating a subsidy to offset the tax. In the meantime, good fuel is wasted, exposed, and dangerous. It's about the dumbest thing in the world, but then again, it was something our government came up with, so at least that makes some sense.

So the Japanese government owns the car engines and the people just pay rent to possess them?

First of all, what on Earth is a "climate denialist"? Are there people who deny that the Earth has a climate? Or is it a farcical misnomer purposely intended to ridicule anyone with the slightest bit of skepticism about something that even the experts aren't 100% certain about? (hint: 95% from IPCC != 100%)

As for your medical advice, the next time you notice your body temperature rise by 1/2 degree in an hour, best go ice bath yourself immediately or you'll soon be dead.

John Snow is an expert in quantum mechanics? Who knew?!