*NewYorkCountryLawyer

Hmm. Apparently he's still around and posting, actually.

Thanks for the info :) Ever since NewYorkCountyLawyer left I haven't seen much in the way of professional legal data around here.

I'm not trying to argue you don't know what you're talking about or you're not right, but those 2 "limbs" sound very shaky to me (IANAL).

1. How do you prove someone is fearful? They might not be showing it outwardly but be terrified in their mind. Can CAT scans detect fear, and differentiate it from other emotions?

2. "Reasonable" is the bane of all our laws these days. "Reasonable suspicion" seems to translate to "someone in authority said they felt like it."

I realize that I sound pedantic saying all this, but I have a hard time seeing how any of this can be quantified objectively. Sorry.

No problem. Rereading it, I can see how it could come off that way.

I wasn't saying *you* were smug.

Speaking for myself, it always raises my hackles when someone responds in such a way that I hear "you're not mature enough for this conversation so I'll ignore any argument you make, you poor, pathetic feeb." However, I haven't come up with any effective way to respond to this, so anger is the substitute emotion (whether you express that anger is obviously another question). I suppose it's probably entangled with my deep-seated hatred for smug people, too.

One can go on and on about how they're the only ethical person on earth, but following the rules and acting logically only gets you so far sometimes. And expecting enlightened reactions from everyone you interact with in life is foolishness.

P.S: Every post I make in this article, I feel like I have to end with "but I'm not condoning the threats" or someone will attack me. Sigh.

Yeah, and historically there were Lisp machines. The PC-combatible/x86 was implied.

Assuming the label is accurately applied. We do love to whip it out around here at the drop of a hat.

Ironically, having read War and Peace myself, I wouldn't say it's an overly good example of feminist literature as most of the female characters IIRC are mostly concerned about their husbands.

Having said that, I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of TV these days is too dark for me to watch much of in a single sitting.

Pulp fiction that is aware of its pulpiness isn't the problem; fiction that is unaware of its pulpiness and the reasons for it is the proposed problem.

But if you outlaw all of them you'll never see the rest.

I have zero tolerance for people who propose zero tolerance reactions to things

Sounds like in practice all the victim has to say is "I took it seriously" no matter how obviously it wasn't serious in order to win in court. Partially because of "tough on crime" but hey.

Hmm...upon further reflection, please ignore all my jaw-flapping (in this thread ;). I've argued myself around in a circle and I can't even make up my mind what my original point was.

Sorry to waste your time and braincells :P

Er, when I say "A and B overlap" I mean that you can't tell for certain whether they're being serious or making a joke. Being both at the same time is rather difficult.

You could have dropped half that comment and just put this as the first sentence. And I find it funny how much you use the word "clearly" when we're talking greyscale.

...doesn't mean that they won't try to *find out* where you live. So whoop--it could happen! Therefore that one's credible.

Considering how notoriously hard it is to tell on the Internet whether someone is being serious, I would only exclude those threats that are physically impossible (your Cardassian example). In which case it's possible to end up with 90% of threats received being "credible." Maybe not likely, though? It is Internet trolls we're talking about here, but SWATing is a thing, too.

I'm not finding extracting an objective definition from this circular definition as "clearly" easy as you claim. Saying A = everything !B doesn't work when A and B overlap, because you can argue that B = everything !A and now we have an incompatible center of the Venn diagram which is both A, therefore !B, and B, therefore !A, which was kind of my point (in retrospect ;)