One of our country's most important cases dealt with the rights of a well-known scumbag at the time of his arrest. Look up the 1966 case of Miranda vs. Arizona.

He was subsequently retried and convicted without the excluded evidence. So it is possible to obtain a conviction in some cases without some evidence.

The proper way to remedy abuses during the Civil Rights Era would have been (perhaps) to amend the Constitution so as to specify that assault (including sexual) and murder could not be nullified.

"We didn't engage in Jury Nullification, Your Honor, we did not feel that the State presented a case beyond a reasonable doubt."

Please note, this doesn't mean I believe that he shouldn't be charged and tried for such an offense (though I'm not sure what the charge would be, precisely). Merely that he has not, as of yet, been so convicted. And "improper use of military equipement" should be an additional charge filed at the same time, as it was comitted as a part of the same offense.

Thing of it is, now that this evidence has been ruled inadmissable, they probably can't find enough evidence through other means that doesn't tie back to this evidence to build a case. Doesn't matter that they might have charged him with improper use of military equipment, they probably cannot find a method by which to demonstrate that improper use occurred without resorting to inadmissable evidence to find it, so the fruit of the tree is poisoned, as it were.

I am not a lawyer either, but I have been interested in how this aspect of law would play-out. It may affect the prosecution of those detained in the War on Terror too, if judges recognize illegally-obtained evidence and the subsequent evidence produced from it. That could well mean problems with interrogations, and given that this ruling cited a problem with military justice, there's a possibility that such rulings could apply to military tribunals too.

Some of the high schools around here are upwards of 4500 kids, with two lunch periods, six regular serving lines, a dozen a'la carte point of sale stations, the works. The IDs are necessary in these circumstances to keep everyone straight.

Students aren't required to show their ID to enter the school, but if they're asked for their ID and cannot produce it then they have to go through another annoying process in addition to whatever else happened that caused someone to ask for their ID in the first place. Typlically their IDs are required for checking out books from the library, for engaging in official textbook check-out and return with the school bookstore, conducting drop/add of classes in the front office or counseling office, getting released from campus earlier than the normal end of the school day (for those that have fewer than the full-day's classes and have parental permission to leave), and other sorts of things. The ID acts as the central system for ensuring that all business functions of the school run smoothly, even if they never purchase a school lunch.

... says the guy who's never integrated 3 different systems owned by 3 different departments of a bureaucratic local government before.

Same department, actually, and yes, I have. When new students are enrolled, the student information system exports changes nightly, and those changes are imported into the ID system and the school is notified to take the picture and generate the ID. If the student qualifies for Title I free/reduced lunch, the export from the student system creates the record for the school lunch system, and the school lunch system knows how to query the ID system.

The three people involved sit in offices about 40' away from each other an routinely meet to verify that it's working. And none of it requires anything more invasive than standard enrollment data and yearbook data.

Schools maintain a photographic record of their students already.

A cafeteria would need a device of some kind in either system.

Existing POS software for school cafeterias already can cross-reference the enrollment records and photos.

Troubleshooting a system that's widely implemented beyond the cafeteria is also easier, as the people that maintain the ID database, the enrollment records database, and the POS system already exist. They'd either have to take-on new duties or would have to hire someone else.

No, it's about an overly complicated solution to a problem that can be solved with much simpler means.

If the students are required to carry their school-issued ID, that school-issued ID can serve as their payment card, and if there's a concern with fraud in the sense of a different student using the card, then add a PIN pad to the card reader. Mind you, at least in the elementary schools the lunch ladies know who's on free and reduced lunch, who has special diets, etc, so it would be harder for fraud by kids.

Or, cross-link the ID card system's picture database to the POS in the cafeteria, so that when the card is swiped, the picture comes up on-screen, and the lunch lady can see if the student paying is the student on the ID.

And as for elementary schools, at least around here the kids come as a class, and many times the lunch lady simply points to the kid's face on the touchscreen as the whole class is on-screen at one time, so the kid doesn't even need ID.

This fingerprint system seems like an overly complicated, overly invasive means to cover a couple bucks or equivalent-pounds worth of food every day.

Human populations also seem to somehow stabilize when constrained with resources (sometimes in ugly ways, but it does happen).

I don't think that's true in the slightest. Poor, resource-starved populations have the most children. Populations with opportunity and means have the fewest children.

If you want a specific case that can be looked at, look at the population of Gaza from the formal founding of Israel through today. The population absolutely exploded in number between then and now, and that's arguably one of the hardest places to live in the world.

The impact theory that led Barringer to buy the crater assumed that the impactor would be the same size as the crater, and buried below the basin. He expected to make a fortune off of iron mining.

The other theories were related to vulcanism, as that part of the Colorado Plateau has lots of volcanic features within an hours' drive. I know because I just went on a geology field trip organized through a buddy of mine from the geology department at our University. It was rather amusing, watching the tour guides at the crater visitor's center asking him questions.

When it's free, and there's no penalty for failing to participate, and it makes the news as a fad, then this is the expected result, not some outlier.

If anything they should be happy that a few hundred-thousand of the eight million actually completed it; assuming they're around 5% completion that's pretty good for something that there was no obligation to participate in, that required a fairly large amount of time committed that might not have been considered in advance, etc.

It's like an extreme version of the affluenza-type kid that's had everything handed to him going off to college because it's automatic; he does poorly and skips a lot because he has no stake in what happens. His parents pay for everything and he has none of his own cost on the line.

Barringer Crater was a pre-existing landform that wasn't even confirmed to be of extraterrestrial origin until Shoemaker's 1960-ish PhD thesis. Granted, there was suspicion that it was from a meteorite impact, but the theories up until Shoemaker's were all incorrect.

Barringer's claim was granted because it was land, not becuase it was extraterrestrial. Barringer owned the land and got mineral rights to it, and while he may have expected a large iron core, the office granting those rights did it because of it being land.

I really don't want to see the moon explode from overmining and inadequate safety precautions though.

Sounds like what needs to happen is a recognition that when an entity mines in space, it can claim that its value-add in extracting those resources gives a claim to those extracted resources and only those extracted resources, with the possible exception of an active, ongoing extraction operation having the right to exclusive use of the mine and only the mine while the operation is active. Once the operation is inactive then it's fair-game for others to start using it too.

I don't see a lot of threat in the Chinese or any other power colonizing space and managing to keep hold of their colonies. Space exploration is in the same place as "New World" exploration was at the first voyage of Columbus, in the sense that as as species we don't really have the developed means to take territory and hold it, and I expect that it'll go through a revolutionary-era as well, when those that have actually done the colonizing or the progeny thereof decides that they don't really need the mother-country anymore. That period might be harder if the colonies don't find ways to be self-sufficient, but given the sheer cost in sending supplies, any colony would have to be self-sufficient to be financially practical. Like the United States was in the 1770s, space colonies will be too far away from the motherland to be easily held if those colonies want to break away, as it'll be too expensive garrison them and simply won't be worth the effort.

Mind... Blown...

So does that mean we'll hear some Ellington and Goodman and Miller, and that they'll know absolutely everything there is to know about their musical theory?