Almost all sports are judged to some degree, even if it is only a referee making decisions. In any case, those sports are all in there because they have large international competitions and structures, with well defined rules that many athletes feel are worth competing under. If they were just a pure judgement call people wouldn't bother participating since there would be no clear and objective way to measure and improve their performance, but that's not how they work.

The judges use very specific criteria, just like an examiner does to mark papers in an academic setting. For example, in rhythmic gymnastics there is a list of moves, ranked by difficulty and judged on how well the athlete meets the prescribed forms. It's not about looking good, it's about doing the motions correctly and with a high level of skill.

You can try with the dunce cap, but you'll have to be quicker than that.

If you actually read my post, instead of assuming a meaning and replying to that, you'll see that you've mostly posted non sequiturs. I did not label the situation add good or bad, so you cannot accuse me of bias in that regard.

It is indisputably not due to genetics as ten years is too short. So, I ask again, what had changed?

The fact that you jumped from that question to one of your customary rants indicated very singly that you have a substantial axe to grind.

Um... The picture you linked to doesn't show a peep sight. Could you perhaps circle it and post the image somewhere? I'm interested to know what you think a peep sight it.

There are still big problems with this.

1. The police were warned not to go after people for this kind of thing, with specific advice from the Attorney General. Yet, they carry on doing it.

2. They don't seem to understand Twitter. The laws they are using are anti-harassment laws, designed to stop people trolling the families of victims and the like. This guy didn't send his joke to those people, and they would probably have never heard it if the police hadn't brought it to their attention.

3. While the tweet was public, so are billions of others made every day. It's akin to saying something distasteful but not illegal to your friends while walking down the street, and being arrested because someone somewhere could have been offended by it.

Democracy = each *vote* has equal power
Capitalism = each *dollar* has equal power

We're just seeing the first half of "capitalist democracy" in action. It's how capitalism has always worked and will always work.

This is the new Godwin. And in this case, you are wrong. This is the police being dumb fucks, as usual. They have been given specific advice about this sort of thing, but are ignoring it.

It's actually the people who oppose the social justice warriors who are calling for this kind of things: the Daily Mail readers. The ones who wanted the porn filters. The ones were are permanently offended about everything, especially other people people's offence.

Actually European human rights do give people some right not to be offended in certain, very limited circumstances. For example, someone who has just been bereaved has a right to a certain amount of peace, e.g. not having people standing outside their homes screaming abuse all day. See, in Europe there are both positive and negative freedoms, i.e. your right to scream abuse vs. everyone else's right not to listen to it in their own homes.

Arresting someone for posting something on Twitter is way, way, way beyond what little protection people have though. The victim's families are not forced to read these tweets, and in fact it's somewhat doubtful if they would ever have heard about them if the police hadn't turned it into a media circus by being their usual moronic selves.

Try reading some old dragnet scripts for a feel of what it used to be like.

I think they used "citizens" sometimes in the bits before the show talking about the city and more often they used "people" but also used "the public" and "man" and "woman".
I don't recall "civilian" being used.

http://www.otrr.org/FILES/Scri...

There's a blog from 2009 about this
http://pl.atyp.us/wordpress/in...

It looks like the international definition of civilians includes police officers. ("A civilian under international humanitarian law (also known as the laws of war) is a person who is not a member of his or her countryâ(TM)s armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants." )

I've been unable to google when the police started using "civilian" widely. Most states still advertise for "civilian police force" jobs. So the police are explicitly civilian in the state's eyes.

They are out protesting in large numbers because the video evidence of the obvious unwarranted and undeserved death motivated them more than simple hearsay.

The police department is changing its training policies as a result. The police department lost a lot of political capital even tho the two police officers were nobilled.

The city and the police department are spending a lot of extra money and going thru a lot of unpleasant times because of the video which will hopefully encourage them to be more careful next time they might want to illegally choke someone to death.

And two officers may have been killed* which is really terrible. But hopefully the police will work on community relations to regain the trust and support of the citizens.

*Or it may have just been a whacko who would have shot the police officers anyway.

Do you realize that american police officers kill united states citizens at over 50x the rate UK and German police officers kill their citizens?

Do you realize that american police officers kill more children each year (including 7 year old girls) than UK and german police officers kill all citizens (including adults) combined? And basically at an infinitely higher rate.

United states police have reported* killing over 400 citizens per year since 9/11. Meanwhile, germany and uk have killed reported killing under 4 citizens per year in the same time period.

*United states police forces are NOT required to report citizens killed and many do not so the actual number of citizens killed in the united states is higher than reported.

Go back a little before that and the average temperature was 12c higher than now for hundreds of millions of years at a time.

http://geology.utah.gov/survey...

http://geology.utah.gov/survey...

Basically, we are still in the middle of an ice age that peaked 20k years ago and started about 65 million years ago.

In farenheit terms- we average 58 degrees globally today (and rising) and we averaged 72 degrees globally from 65 million years ago to 185 million years ago.

The largest place I see ei playing out is in things in limited quantity.

Most the population is being priced out of things which used to be generally free or affordable.

In texas, the beaches were always free but now some stretches are being locked up. On the east coast, large stretches of beach are "private".

Amusement parks are grossly over crowded but if you have money (5x the standard price), you don't have a line.

Collectables that used to be affordable if you saved up are now going for more than your entire life income because when a person has a billion dollars they can afford to drop a million dollars on a comic book.

Likewise, there are private ski resorts, special "extra money" ski privileges in areas that used to be affordable to all and equally open to all.

Likewise for the front rows at concerts, opening nights for shows.

When the wealthiest made 52x what the rest did, their spending was constrained. They could have anything but they couldn't have everything. Now at 350x to 452x, they can pretty much have everything special and unique.

The balance of wealth between the richest and poorest in society determines how we share rare things in our society. Currently, we've reached a point where the richest get everything and even the "non-rich" get a lot less than they did in the past.

Pretty sure Google still doesn't have satellites, they buy their images from DigitalGlobe like everyone else.

Except for the first little girl who called, he reduced her to tears.