I happen to believe that the three strikes law is stupid, unjust, unfair, and also applied in an unfair manner.

OTOH, the legislature had been doing a terrible job. Referendum can be counted upon to do a poor job, but in that case the legislature had been doing worse. And, unfortunately, it often does even worse than the referendum legislation...which is nearly uniformly bad.

In the case of the legislature, I suspect that it's due to campaign finance laws. Even the state legislature is bought and sold by corporate intereses. (I hope that smaller states have less of this problem. They OUGHT to, on theoretical grounds, but if the big government states sufficiently corrupt the standard morals, then they might not be *much* better.)

As for "this product is believed by the state of California to cause cancer", that warning is quite reasonable. If you disagree with the warning, you should be free to ignore it, but not to expose people to it without warning them. (Again, this was referendum legislation, so it was written by *believers*, or it would never have gotten passed. And this means that there will be lots of bad parts to it. But the legislation had refused to act.)

I really despise laws passed by referendum. They are always poorly written, often overbroad, and usually written by "true believers". The problem is that the legislature tends to ignore the concerns of the populace, so what alternative is there?
(FWIW, I think legislation passed by referendum should have the same status as an ordinary law unless it gets a 2/3 vote of the populace. That way bugs could be fixed as easily as in normal laws. I.e., not very easily, but possible. Unfortunately, the referendum was designed as a modification of the state constitution. Poor design decision. And extremely difficult to revise.)

Is he in California? It's a state law, not a federal law.

That said, I believe the laws should be such that he would be liable for identity fraud. Making public data that was revealed under the explicit understanding that it would be kept private should qualify.

I'm less certain that it should be illegal to tag pictures that are already publicly available.

IIUC, he COULD be charged with copyright infringement, as, IIUC, one's photograph has the copyright owned by oneself unless an explicit document has been signed to allow it to be shared. This, however, is rarely enforced unless one is a movie star. (There may be something in there about comercial gain. IANAL, so don't count on this being accurate.)

My canada post delivery guy in Toronto was stealing the games being sent to me for review. But since he marked them as "delivered" (eg. dropped on the doorstep) they told me it wasn't their fault.
Except I worked right by the front door, and kept it open in the summer for fresh air. If the guy had even set foot in the driveway I would have heard his footsteps on the gravel, and if he came to the doorstep I'd have been looking right at him.

"UK law is clear in that ownership has not transferred to the recipients and that the items should be returned."

Citation?

"but you are required by law to return the product if they request it. "
no, you are not.
from USPS( http://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_tech_021.htm ) bolding done by me:
A company sends you a gift in the mail — a tie, a good luck charm, or a key chain. You didn’t order the gift. What do you do? Many people will feel guilty and pay for the gift. But you don’t have to. What you do with the merchandise is entirely up to you.

If you have not opened the package, mark it “Return to Sender.” The Postal Service will send it back at no charge to you.
If you open the package and don’t like what you find, throw it away.
If you open the package and like what you find, keep it — free. This is a rare instance where “finders, keepers” applies unconditionally.
Whatever you do, don’t pay for it — and don’t get conned if the sender follows up with a phone call or visit. By law, unsolicited merchandise is yours to keep.

" unless (or until) the provider requests that you return it. "
false.

Anything you didn't ask for is unsolicited by definition.
dumb ass.

~~~~~~~~
http://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_tech_021.htm
A company sends you a gift in the mail — a tie, a good luck charm, or a key chain. You didn’t order the gift. What do you do? Many people will feel guilty and pay for the gift. But you don’t have to. What you do with the merchandise is entirely up to you.

If you have not opened the package, mark it “Return to Sender.” The Postal Service will send it back at no charge to you.
If you open the package and don’t like what you find, throw it away.
If you open the package and like what you find, keep it — free. This is a rare instance where “finders, keepers” applies unconditionally.
Whatever you do, don’t pay for it — and don’t get conned if the sender follows up with a phone call or visit. By law, unsolicited merchandise is yours to keep.
~~~~~~~~~
Gift - something bestowed or acquired without being sought or earned by the receiver.

Gifts don't have to be intentional

no, The would be fighting to get what they ordered. It's the companies responsibility not the consumers.

You seem rather persistent in insisting that what you consider "necessary" or "worthwhile" is objectively so, demonstrated simply because you say it is

Not at all. I keep asking what separates the unprovable God hypothesis from other hypotheses (e.g. the teapot, the FSM, etc.). I'm asking *you* to tell me why the God hypothesis is worthwhile, when infinitely many other hypotheses that are equally (un)supported are not. (I presume you'd agree that it's not worth seriously considering the existence of a teapot orbiting the sun).

The scope of "worthwhile" is tautologically defined by the reality you already accept--if it is an extension of philosophical naturalism, it is worthwhile, if it is not, it is not worthwhile.

No, you misunderstand. It's not about me, you do it too. There are infinitely many potentially true things, and you only have finite time to consider them. How do you distinguish between the potentially true things you consider, and the ones that you don't?

You don't see this stance as rather... limiting?

Humans are limited creatures. It does us no good to pretend we know things that we actually do not.

it is simply untrue that knowing "God did it" tells us nothing. At minimum, it tells us God did it.

But that adds no explanatory power to our models. Saying "God did it" does not allow us to make more accurate predictions about observable reality. That's the same as telling us nothing.

My experiences are consistent with many others' as per the expectations of the religion. If there is disparity, you haven't demonstrated it.

"many" others. Try "all others". It only takes one contradictory observation to disprove a hypothesis.

So what? You get "different answers" asking anything from any diverse group, whether it be in politics, art, or for that matter, physics. From this we infer none of the positions is correct?

Politics and art are matters of opinion. In physics, no you don't get different measurements. If you get different measurements for the same phenomenon, you either discovered a novel effect(e.g. you weren't actually observing the same phenomenon), or your apparatus is broken.

Here's an example. The OPERA experiment measured the speed of neutrinos. Every experiment in every laboratory everywhere in the world had already determined through extensive observation that the speed of light is the fastest any particle with mass can go. This one experiment contradicted decades worth of experimental evidence, and got huge amounts of press coverage. As well they should have, it would have turned physics upside down if it were true. But as it turns out, it was a loose cable.

So no, it's not OK to get different answers. If your revelation tells you one thing, and another person's revelation tells them something contradictory, at least one of you is wrong. Since you are both using the same technique, you have to conclude that the technique is unreliable.

Remarkable, given it was presented in this very thread, to you. You neither challenged the evidence nor acknowledged it. "Not seeing it", however, seems remarkably unlikely.

No idea what you're talking about here. Link or quote.

You have not explained how or why hypoxia results in these specific experiences, consistently.

Nor do I need to. That we do not have an explanation for consciousness currently does not mean that deity is required.

Which, ironically, is precisely what you just did. Conjecturing and asserting your conjecture regarding the writings is true.

I did not assert that my conjecture was true. I asserted that it was plausible. If a plausible naturalistic explanation exists, there's no reason for us to assume a supernatural explanation. Remember, I said it was important that evidence be *inconsistant* with the model you are trying to reject. Currently your "evidence" is consistant with both a theistic and naturalistic model of the universe. Show me something inconsistant with a naturalistic model of the universe.

"The evidence" is for the dominant model of the time, in science in particular. For it to expand, someone has to propose a model contrary to the known evidence, and initially, their hypothesis-formation is highly speculative. This is precisely how we came to accept Einstein's Relativity. This will be how we will determine whether String Theory is ultimately correct. This is how we will determine which of the Interpretations of QM is correct--and one of them is, and none of them are differentiable by testing.

Nope. We follow the evidence. Relativity was prompted by the observation that the speed of light is constant in all directions. String theory was prompted by the observation that two extremely well supported models produce nonsensical results when combined.

Can speculation be useful? Sure, but until you have something testable, it's just speculation. Including string theory. Asking "what if" questions is all well and good. The problem comes when you like the answer enough to forget it's a "what if" and call it an "is".

Then people are correct or incorrect based purely and exclusively on whether or not they are correct, based on what actually happened. Conjecturing what might have happened, or noting a lack of knowledge as to what happened, does not alter what happened. If someone saw what happened, they know what happened, regardless of the lack of knowledge of others.

I agree with this entirely. If Bill shot Steve, the people who saw Steve shoot Bill are wrong, the people who saw Andy shoot both of them are wrong, and the people who saw no one shoot anyone are wrong. Using the arbitrarily assigned numbers I made up for illustration, that means that 3 out of 4 eye witnesses are wrong.

But you're an eye witness too! If you know that 3/4 of eye witnesses are wrong, how can you not doubt your own eyes? Their incorrect beliefs were based on "direct empirically derived direct experience", just as yours is. But they were all still wrong! What kind of hubris does it take to make you think that your eyes don't lie, when everyone else's eyes do?

If it's not clear, eyesight here is used as an analogy for revelation.

Yep, I know. I remember when the US post office used to advertise that, with an Eskimo getting a oscillating fan.

And this would count.

"No need to look down to see where the mouse has gotten to on my desk."
was this an actually problem for you? I mean, wow, it might be in a 2 foot square.

"Big fat ball that's always where I expected. Like all the balls in my life."
In your mom?

funny, but I think this might have been funnier

Paradoxes are cute little wiener-doxs!

I don't want to live in world where the end party is responsible for the errors of a company. Assuming the end party didn't intentionally commit fraud.

Otherwise we end up back to a point where companies would just send stuff out and demand payment.