Cue the judgemental and rabid fanatics who are fans or detractors of various brands. This should be as good as a discussion on audio quality... :P

All those moments will be lost in time ...like tears in the rain.

My position is because of the latter, the former is irrelevant. If you are an adult, in a state where a 17 year old can’t give informed consent, don’t have sex with a 17 year old. Period.

I see. Because the law is always right, eh? As in enforcing slavery, suppressing women, having separate entrances for people of the "wrong" color, forcing them to the back of the bus, taking money without a warrant or a court order or a conviction or probable cause, torturing people, making love to the "wrong" sex (or just involving the "wrong" orifice), allowing (only) congress to engage in insider trading, retroactively increasing the sentences of the convicted, wiretapping and so forth without warrants, shooting Indians without consequence...

I could go on for quite a while with regard to laws that were completely, utterly wrong and which never, ever should have been obeyed on their own merits, or even in the context of maintaining public order. Certainly they deserved no part whatsoever in any call for "respect" for the system -- to the contrary, laws like these tell thinking citizens that the law is -- and lawmakers are -- not worthy of respect.

But you, your position as stated, is "obey", and that's the end of it. So really what you're saying is that if your masters -- and face it, that's what you are presenting them as -- say "lick the typhus infected dog crap off my boots", you will kneel down, stick that tongue out, and proceed to shine, shine, shine -- and that you want others to do the same.

Your way of thinking about this -- "It was illegal, and you shouldn’t do it" -- is fundamentally unsound. Your point of view is blinkered and short-sighted. Your concept of "should" is toxic. When the law is wrong, it is wrong -- and the only sound reason to obey bad law is to protect those you love and your own life from evil, coercive violence from the same source. When law is bad, if you can disobey, you should disobey.

The only governance worthy of obedience and respect is good governance. Anything else deserves a swift kick in the ass.

The trick to the Betteridge law is that when a journalist writes a headline as a question, the question is suggesting what most people find improbable; and the improbable rarely happens.

There's some of that. But that's more about choice of subject matter. A journalist ALWAYS needs to write something that is SOMEHOW different from what the reader believes. (If he's just reinforcing what the reader believes, why should a reader bother reading his output?)

The real trick that leads to qusetion-headlines (that are almost always implying something that's wrong) is different.

When a journalist writes a juicy headline as a question, it's because he couldn't find evidence to support the conjecture, but wants to run it anyway.

Usually this is because he guessed wrong. The deadline is approaching, he's got to publish SOMETHING to stay employed, and he just wasted a bunch of time researching something that didn't pan out. Oops! So he runs his orignnal conjecture and the workup he did on it before finding out that it was either wrong (usual) or maybe right but couldn't be supported in the time available (rarely). He just phrases the headline as a speculation rather than an assertion.

That way his credibility isn't wrecked for the future, he gets to publish something, it's interesting and plausible (even though probably totally bogus), and in those rare cases where it WAS right he's scooped his competitors. However it comes out it's a win for the journalist - though it's a bunch of noise for the readers.

Einstein offered theories that could be checked by others. And were.

Just last week I read an entire book by Allan and Barbara Pease. Even this book (which promises the moon in three easy lessons) says that body language is best interpreted though consistent clusters.

Here, the static eye test amounts to a form of dead reckoning.

Claiming that this equates to the general ability to read people smacks of claiming that someone who can track big game from muddy impressions and broken twigs has the cognitive drop on Charles Darwin on all matters of big game observation.

As with personality indicators, one could in all likelihood devise fifteen other masked channels (not all of which consist of static images) with roughly the same degree of outcome correlation (where the reference outcome is something like success in group settings).

I also think this study's emphasis on freeze-frame campfire empathy is unfair to male performance. If you're in the business of poking sharp sticks at snakes or lions, the perceptual ability required is not to determine the animal's emotional state (angry, aggressive, threatened, lethal) but to determine moment by moment whether the animal will shrink back or strike forward.

The Pease book is clearly aimed at people in a sales environment (in which I also include making presentations in a board room) where the ability to form extremely rapid first impressions / first-reaction impressions is critical to career success (as opposed to short-term blood retention).

Compare the "it's not your fault" scene in Good Will Hunting (pachydermous elephant in the room) with the extended marital quarrel in Before Midnight (mass stampede of the unshackled lambs).

In the later case, neither spouse is seeing anything he and she haven't seen before (they could each write a book), but their proficiency in scorched-earth integration to identify a workable point of repair is severely put to the test.

That sounds a whole like Empathy to me, but dressed up in some fancy new clothes.

How could you know when you identity every person in the entire Empathy clan as just some Jim Bob or Jane Barb from poverty valley?

Empathy was never a precise concept in the first place, and most people are too lazy to clearly distinguish the perceptual side of empathy from the dispositional side (the later of which is heavily conflated with approval seeking and conflict avoidance, and these are further conflated with meekness/aggression, introversion/extroversion, low status/high status).

Dressing empathy up in a recognizable set of clothes (e.g. Marty Mindsight), roughly equates to clearing your throat before attempting to say something civilized.

Even in modern countries there are holes. I live in Iceland and we have one of the best rates of broadband connectivity and fiber deployment in the world. But my land is in a sparsely populated valley so it hasn't paid off to run a line out there, most people just use their cell phones for a net connection. If satellite could beat that (and wouldn't be too blocked by mountains), even in highly connected countries there's a real potential market here.

Heck, there's a lot of people who would get it if the price and stats were right even if they had ground-based broadband. Everyone here has bandwidth caps on international net traffic, only domestic is unlimited. So people who want to do a lot of downloads of foreign content might well choose that instead of or inaddition to regular broadband.

If technology had jumped directly from the 1979 Impala to the 2014 Honda Accord, yes, that would have been really f*ing amazing and a huge technological innovation, and the company that did it worthy of every bit of praise thrown at it for doing so.

Yeah, I had written a section about this but must have messed up my tags and Slashdot ate it.. Delta clipper highest achieved altitude: 1 kilometer. Falcon 9 first stage alone highest achieved altitude: 130km. Delta clipper furthest flown from the landing pad before landing: 300 meters. Falcon 9 first stage alone, furthest flown from the landing pad before landing: 300km. Delta clipper mass ratio, 2,5. Falcon 9 first stage alone, mass ratio 20 (and the boosters on the Falcon Heavy have a mass ratio of 30). And on and on and on. Not to mention that they're built utterly differently.

Aww, Slashdot ate my whole paragraph comparing Falcon 9 to the Delta Clipper, that was the best one.... must have messed up my tagging :(

Sure. But it doesn't work there, either.

The fucker is 47 years old. 47!!! What version of "consensual" was it?

She was 17. It is your position that a 17-year old could never give informed consent? That's pretty much the law's position (and it is demonstrably stupid, and almost always harmful, and so out of touch with reality it's almost frightening.) If you're going with "age line in the sand" to define 17 year olds as incompetent by definition in such matters, then you are all those things the law is, and we're done -- take your torch and pitchfork and have at it.

Get here? Ok, then I presume that is not your position, and that you agree that at least some 17 year olds can indeed give informed consent. So the next question is, is it your position that such a a 17-year old can give informed consent if the partner is also 17, but not if the partner is 47? Because I have to tell you, that kind of thinking can only arise from magical bullshit, and I'm fresh out. Anyway...

I shouldn't have to even ask this, but given the twisted, peculiar nature of your post, I presume you agree that the 47 year old can give informed consent, yes?.

Also, at least get your terminology right. A pedophile is someone with a sexual interest in children. Which is horrific and creepy, because children aren't sexually mature and so sexuality, by its very definition, isn't part of their normal and customary worldview. And putting it there, or trying to, is abusive, in the fundamental sense of the term. You know, child abuse. Because they're children.

An ephibophile, on the other hand, is someone with primary or exclusive sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, often described as ages 15 to 19 (but perhaps much more accurately defined by the single criteria of being physically a sexually mature human being. 15 is not a magic number, no matter what your astrologer has been telling you.) Note that if this is not your primary or exclusive interest, then you're just a typical person. Because sexually mature bodies are typically of normal and healthy sexual interest to most who are sexually active. Which is not to say that the first word out of a teenager's mouth might not send most 47-year-olds running away screaming, but that's really not the same issue.

Also note that for many teenagers (I want to say all, but I have not met them all) sex is pretty much the #1 subject on their mind. Learning about it, having it, exploring it, and so on. The whole shebang, as it were. And this is precisely correct behavior from the POV of the body's various clocks. Socially, we have to deal with the hangover of superstition and Victorian insanity, but the fact is, many teenagers (definitely including the 17 year old demo) are having great, happy sex all the time and the vast majority of those so engaged are both glad of it and not even fractionally interested in any contrary opinion of yours thereof.

Sometimes sex is about relationships and all of that. Complex, interrelated, even a matter of power or submission. Which can be wonderful. Rah, rah. But sometimes it's just sex. Hot, steamy, bouncy, hanging-from-the-chandeliers physical activity with a bang. Or several. Ahem. In such a case, and in the instance of informed consent, I see absolutely no barrier to sex between a 17 year old and a 47 year old, any more than I see a barrier between a 17 year old and a 47 year old that should prevent them from playing tennis, or chess.

Here in Montana, the age of consent -- below which "sex without consent" can be charged -- is sixteen. It's still stupid as there will be (mostly) exceptions on either side of the rule, but the point is, were that guy here, no one would even blink, legally speaking.

Seems to me that you put your Outrage Panties on a little too tight this morning.

They're quite wrong. In denial, most likely,

LOOK at it. Over 300,000 years, CO2 *never* pulls far away from temperature by more than a little bit -- the degree of tracking is extremely consistent, to the point that we can observe a maximum deviation between the two of X. Over any period of time. In addition, correlation of slope direction and lead/lag are very high.

Now, a look at the last graph segment clearly shows CO2 making an excursion away from temperature of a magnitude far in excess of X over any other similar time frame on the graph. If temperature were following CO2 as the graph otherwise might have been interpreted to have been telling us, then we could reasonably expect at least that the slope direction would match; it doesn't. We could also expect that the delta between CO2 and temperature at least would be in range as per the rest of the graph; it isn't. We could also expect that temperature would now be around, or past, -60 at the core location; it isn't (not even close.)

That graph, if accurate (and that seems to be the consensus) is telling us VERY loudly that CO2 is not tightly driving temperature, not generally, and definitely not right now. That leaves only two possibilities: (1) Temperature is driving CO2 (you might think so right now... the current spike is an addition to the normal amount, so it doesn't defray the idea that temperature is the driver of the tracking component... except for one problem: the graph, prior to modern +CO2 times, shows CO2 both leading and lagging temperature, as well as local bi-directional spikes of each that the other does not follow within the bounds of the same rate of change as shown on the rest of the graph, which serves to exonerate both as drivers), or (2) something unknown is driving them both, for which we have significant indicators pointing that way.

The GW advocates are telling us that CO2 is a tight driver of temperature, and it's going to bite us. The evidence doesn't support that, nor does the historical record.

The non-GW advocates are telling us that it's all a plot for financial gain, which is absurd (although that's not to say that there isn't financial advantage to be found in either camp.)

I say, by policy, we should quit emitting crap of any kind into the atmosphere. We don't know how it keeps its balance, and it's going to be all too interesting if it suddenly fails to balance. I'd rather not find out what that means in practical terms. I don't own either enough ammo to survive social breakdown, or a sealed environment suitable for living out my life in spite of arbitrarily hazardous conditions.

Plea bargains would be fine if the penalties for a crime weren't ten times what they should be.

No, they wouldn't. They only time they are "fine" is when they let the accused off completely without damage to reputation, financial position, or property. (as in, I'll never, ever do it again your honor / case dismissed, arrest record expunged) And plea bargains never, ever do that, so they are uniformly toxic.

Plea bargains do a lot more than save time and money. They uniformly increase the win streak for the prosecutor (they are never a win for the defense), which has value in several ways -- it's good political capital, it makes promotion more likely, it reduces workload, they don't have to prove their case (a different issue than workload... this is more about actual, you know, justice), and the promises made don't actually have to be kept. Promise the accused that the adjudication withheld verdict will protect them from a criminal record? Sure, go ahead. But it won't. Promise them that the result will be the end of it, that is, this is what will happen, and that's the deal? Sure, go ahead. Then watch gleefully as ex post facto laws alter the deal, Darth Vader style. Even years or decades after the fact. Plea bargains also put the hangman's choice to the innocent: plead guilty to this lesser thing, suck up the criminal record, and we "promise" that'll be the end of it. Otherwise, at trial, we're going to charge you with enough so that something will stick, and it's off to prison for you plus the criminal record and loss of everything you own and concomitant damage to your family. Your "choice", which of course is no choice at all unless you already have nothing to protect - reputation, family, home, finances.

And remember, the choice to "take a plea" does not mean that anything you were promised must, or will, come to pass. What it does mean is that you just jumped head first into the grinder of a fundamentally broken justice system, and you're about to become hamburger.