Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 7:15 pm

ah, I see. Ok, I can understand that, it's just weird and sort of infuriating that they couldn't actually convict him when photos surfaced showing him committing multiple crimes just because he'd already been acquitted.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 8:12 pm

Oh, they convicted him, just not on the original charges. He'd perjured himself in the first trial (by saying he didn't do it), and they tried and convicted him for that (and for a second time in a different case). All told, he spent fourteen years in prison, and only outlived his sentence by two years.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 9:57 pm

Right, I saw that when I checked wikipedia to factcheck the Cracked image. It's something sure, but I sort of wonder if they included a rape charge in the first trial, because if not, then they could've gotten him on that, and likely for a longer sentence. The fact that they didn't try him for rape post-photos does lead me to believe it was one of the charges in the first trial, but I didn't see any mention.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 10:15 pm

Prak wrote:Right, I saw that when I checked wikipedia to factcheck the Cracked image. It's something sure, but I sort of wonder if they included a rape charge in the first trial, because if not, then they could've gotten him on that, and likely for a longer sentence. The fact that they didn't try him for rape post-photos does lead me to believe it was one of the charges in the first trial, but I didn't see any mention.

It's part of the same criminal transaction.

Double Jeopardy doesn't apply to a charge, it applies to a set of facts. If there's a rape and a murder, and you only charge the murder, you can't then go back and charge rape, because it's part of the same crime.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 10:21 pm

Ah, gotcha.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 10:44 pm

It's already been covered, but yeah. Double jeopardy exists so that the justice system can't just roll the dice until it gets what it wants - or until you've spent years of your life playing through the same hellish trial over and over despite having been proven innocent four times. Like any law that protects innocent people from being found guilty (or harassed by over-zealous law enforcement), it will necessarily protect some non-zero number of guilty people from being found guilty (or harassed by over-zealous law enforcement). But the alternative is letting prosecutors fish for favorable juries, and that makes you considerably less safe from our legal system. And our legal system is fucked, if you haven't noticed.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Oct 04, 2015 8:45 pm

How come every time I see or hear someone talking about the "degeneracy" of our/western society, they always say they think the age of consent should be lowered to 12 or something crazy like that if you keep them talking long enough? Just seems random but I've seen it enough times...

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 8:49 pm

I would imagine it has a lot to do with the line of thought that "modern society is bad and we should go back a couple hundred years where you didn't have these problems!"

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:16 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:How come every time I see or hear someone talking about the "degeneracy" of our/western society, they always say they think the age of consent should be lowered to 12 or something crazy like that if you keep them talking long enough? Just seems random but I've seen it enough times...

1) Because they're conservative, and the age of consent used to seriously be 12 or lower in some of the United States until shockingly recently.

2) Because the current age of consent is pretty much arbitrary. It's not like kids all mature physically or mentally at exactly the same rate, and there's little or no physical, mental, or emotional distinction between someone that's 1 day shy of their 18th birthday and someone that's 1 day older than it.

I say pretty much, because there's a good reason the age of sexual consent was raised: we realize that young adults and children are physically and mentally immature and are not ready for the rigors of childbirth (for girls), the emotions that go with sexual relationships, or the decision-making ability to handle the short or long-term consequences of their actions. Which does nothing to stop teenagers from having sex, and never has. Especially with each other. But it DOES largely serve as a restriction on adults taking advantage of children and young adults for sexual purposes, and that as much as anything is why we have an age of consent in the first place.

So 18 is the general guideline in most states (special circumstances and creepy dudes with laminated rape cards notwithstanding). It's arbitrary, sure, but most teenagers are done with their first growth of puberty at that point, girls are generally getting their period, there's a good coming-of-age event in high school graduation, and lots of other things tend to unlock at 18 too. From a societal standpoint, 18 is completely arbitrary but acceptable.

So why 12? Because that's often an age when puberty starts, especially for girls. Yep, teenager girls often get their first period around then and boys their first boners, sometimes younger or older depending on environment and how well they eat and other factors. We don't see 12 year olds as adults because they often have quite a bit of growing to do - it's the start of puberty, not the end of it. And if you're focused on sex as a measure of "ability to physically conceive a child Y/N," then you can see why that would be important. The fact that 12 year olds should not be having kids is beside the point, if you're focused on babymaking as the sole qualifier. And really, that is the sole qualifier for arguing changing the age of consent to 12.

Setting the age of consent to age 18 has some weird effects. You get a lot of porn, for example, focused on the ages hovering immediately around it - 17 and 19. You get weird laws that legalize statutory rape if the participants are within three years of each other, so a 19 year old doesn't go to jail for having a 16 year old girlfriend. In terms of child pornography, you can have 17 year olds arrested for sexting pictures of themselves. That all sounds bad...but it's the same kind of thing you would have at any age of consent. You set the age of consent at 12, you're going to have lots of "Yesterday I Was 11!" porn videos come out, "13 And Pregnant" on television, etc.

That's a bad thing. We have an age of consent in the first place because we recognize that minors need protection against sexual predation from adults. We recognize that minors are not themselves mentally developed enough to enter into adult-style relationships, even if physically capable of sex. Their decision-making abilities just aren't there yet. It's why they aren't allowed to sign contracts or manage huge sums of money or even work for the most part. And let's not forget, sex can be physically damaging for people no matter at what age, both in terms of the act itself and the aftermath - STDs, hygiene, secondary infections, pregnancy in the case of girls - and that is generally something that kids aren't ready to handle either.

And we recognize that plenty of people are attracted to teenagers and young adults. Why? Because they went through puberty at around that age too, and their sexual awakening often fixated on people around their own age. For some people, those tastes change throughout their life; for others, it doesn't. Because we hold sex with "jailbait" as taboo, it even becomes fetishized, and some people respond to that and get attracted to younger partners than they might otherwise. And yes, there are a few people that are sexually interested in pre-pubescent children, and that's even more egregious in the eyes of most people.

3) Sometimes, people take stances because it aligns with their personal preferences. Some people are maybe willing to push for the age of consent to be lowered to 12 on principle, but more often than not I think they just want to make it local to pick up sexual partners at the local middle school. Which is creepy as fuck, but people will try to justify a lot of preferences and views that are terrible on the face of it.

It's kinda why people that don't like homosexuals marrying each other like to argue it's a slippery slope to allow bestiality; they operate on mistaken assumptions that homosexuals are sexual perverts and that recognizing any aspect of their relationship as normal or acceptable is going to lead to something worse being legalized. They seriously just see homosexuality and bestiality as being on a spectrum of sexual perversion. A spectrum that, if you pressed them hard enough, probably includes sodomy, masturbation, and interracial marriage. Seriously, fuck those people.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 11:18 pm

When I was 12, I would have been very happy with the age of consent being lowered to 12.

Lower ages of consent are also popular with the youth rights contingent, which is predominantly made up of young people who are tired of having fewer rights because of their age.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Oct 05, 2015 1:02 am

hyzmarca wrote:When I was 12, I would have been very happy with the age of consent being lowered to 12.

Lower ages of consent are also popular with the youth rights contingent, which is predominantly made up of young people who are tired of having fewer rights because of their age.

Fucking hell, hyz.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Oct 05, 2015 2:34 am

erik wrote:
hyzmarca wrote:When I was 12, I would have been very happy with the age of consent being lowered to 12.

Lower ages of consent are also popular with the youth rights contingent, which is predominantly made up of young people who are tired of having fewer rights because of their age.
Fucking hell, hyz.

I don't think "kids want to be treated like adults" is a controversial statement.

If you ask a kid what they think that the minimum age for anything should be, they'll probably say their age, or lower.

And this is true for anything you can name, at any age, because no one likes to be left out. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Kids tend to greatly overestimate their competence.

It does mean that issues like age of consent, drinking age, voting age, and so on, tend to be more relevant to younger people and younger people tend to be more favor of lowering them. This is usually a bad idea.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:29 am

Ok, so I know the division of Natural/Legal rights is bullshit. All rights are granted by governments (shut up Libertarian side of TGD, you're dumb).

But, it's potentially a handy tool for discussing repeal/modification of certain rights vs. others because Conservatives always think guns are vital to life, but free speech is unnecessary (except of course when they want to say racist shit).

Is there actually some distinction in the Bill of Rights as to which are legal rights (ie, rights we understand as granted by the government and not inherent) and natural rights (ie, rights we have decided to recognize as inherent to the dignity of life)?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:17 am

Prak wrote:Is there actually some distinction in the Bill of Rights as to which are legal rights (ie, rights we understand as granted by the government and not inherent) and natural rights (ie, rights we have decided to recognize as inherent to the dignity of life)?

Of fucking course not, you are dumb.

It isn't useful to lie about the source of rights. The correct reason that the second amendment should be stricken and that the first amendment shouldn't be is because one of them is good for us, and the other fucking isn't. If you aren't appealing to consequences for why X is good and Y is bad, you are either lying or stupid.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:31 am

I don't know, honest arguments sure aren't any use against people who believe crazy delusions. I thought maybe turning their delusions against them might be worth a try.

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:33 am

A noteworthy theme in the Bill of Rights, and most of the better subsequent amendments, is in the protection of rights which engender directly-applicable political powers, or which protect an individual from a hostile government's bad-faith judicial games.

So I don't really buy any "natural rights" discussion, either then or today. The real imperative (which wasn't necessarily what any particular framer was thinking about, but which had to happen to result in this government lasting continuously for more than two centuries) was to build failsafes against the system working itself into a broken condition. Like, can you imagine if it was okay to author legislation that said "it's illegal to talk about repealing this law"? The moment shit like that goes on the books, your society is just rendered permanently incapable of communicating the consent on which its government is legitimized. So as pleased as I am that I can use profanities all I want, the real reason I need the first amendment is to tell people that I want to keep using profanities as much as I want. And, in point of fact, even build a coalition of people who agree.

If these points are conceded, then the conversation about firearms ownership is moved to a place where justification for the 2nd amendment as a reasonable entry to the constitution extends only so far as society can employ firearms as an effective failsafe against government overreach. Now your debate rival is admitting the Black Panther Party's neighborhood watch as favorable evidence (whereupon they acquiesce to some jabs at Ronald Reagan), and probably go on record legitimizing armed seditionary movements to some extent. Then you're having a fucking conversation, man.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 9:36 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Sydney is surrounded by a 15m tall wall made out of steel and concrete. Even so, the bugs and 'saurs make regular attempts to climb over or push through - defending the wall requires constant vigilance. The locks are quite impressive: each side has an enormous metal gear that rolls into and out of place, it looks like nothing so much as a Cardassian space station. Unfortunately, unless you're coming in on the South Entrance, the entire lock area is only 15 meters across, meaning that you can't go in or out with an 18 wheeler. That's why most goods come in and out by boat or through the Train Iris.

-Username17

So, what does this wall and gate look like, I haven't found it googling.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 9:59 am

Eikre wrote:Like, can you imagine if it was okay to author legislation that said "it's illegal to talk about repealing this law"? The moment shit like that goes on the books, your society is just rendered permanently incapable of communicating the consent on which its government is legitimized.

That's exactly how things are in Russia right now.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Thu Oct 22, 2015 6:53 pm

I had a pair of stupid/clever ideas and I'd like you to tell me how stupid they are.

1. Gun buyback programs are great, but they won't happen in America. What if the government set up an optional buyback and made resale of guns to anyone else illegal? It seems like this could do something to prevent all the cases where someone who really shouldn't have been allowed a gun buys one secondhand.

2. For most people who work, a whole lot of piracy is just not worth it. With the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to pirate some things, you could just buy them with your wages from a fraction of that time. So, what if there was a legal site for piracy that was just extremely time-consuming. If done right, it could reduce other sources of piracy and actually increase revenue.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 12:27 pm

TiaC wrote: 1. Gun buyback programs are great, but they won't happen in America. What if the government set up an optional buyback and made resale of guns to anyone else illegal? It seems like this could do something to prevent all the cases where someone who really shouldn't have been allowed a gun buys one secondhand.

It wouldn't stop the people who shouldn't already have guns from having them, and those people wouldn't sell their guns. I guess it might help reduce the issue in the long term.

TiaC wrote: 2. For most people who work, a whole lot of piracy is just not worth it. With the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to pirate some things, you could just buy them with your wages from a fraction of that time. So, what if there was a legal site for piracy that was just extremely time-consuming. If done right, it could reduce other sources of piracy and actually increase revenue.

I'm not sure how to parse the phrase "legal site for piracy". By definition, piracy is illegal. Are you talking about a free site supported by the owners of the IP and paid for with ad revenue, or something? You have to make your legal options more attractive than illegal ones if you want people to stop committing crimes.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 5:45 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
TiaC wrote: 2. For most people who work, a whole lot of piracy is just not worth it. With the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to pirate some things, you could just buy them with your wages from a fraction of that time. So, what if there was a legal site for piracy that was just extremely time-consuming. If done right, it could reduce other sources of piracy and actually increase revenue.
I'm not sure how to parse the phrase "legal site for piracy". By definition, piracy is illegal. Are you talking about a free site supported by the owners of the IP and paid for with ad revenue, or something? You have to make your legal options more attractive than illegal ones if you want people to stop committing crimes.

In that you can download media from this site legally, and the site doesn't face takedown notices, but it will put you through some busywork first. (You could make the busywork some revenue-generating task if you felt like it.) Even though it would often be more annoying than piracy, the legality would still be attractive to many people. (You might need some form of DRM.)

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:05 pm

TiaC wrote:
RobbyPants wrote:
TiaC wrote: 2. For most people who work, a whole lot of piracy is just not worth it. With the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to pirate some things, you could just buy them with your wages from a fraction of that time. So, what if there was a legal site for piracy that was just extremely time-consuming. If done right, it could reduce other sources of piracy and actually increase revenue.
I'm not sure how to parse the phrase "legal site for piracy". By definition, piracy is illegal. Are you talking about a free site supported by the owners of the IP and paid for with ad revenue, or something? You have to make your legal options more attractive than illegal ones if you want people to stop committing crimes.
In that you can download media from this site legally, and the site doesn't face takedown notices, but it will put you through some busywork first. (You could make the busywork some revenue-generating task if you felt like it.) Even though it would often be more annoying than piracy, the legality would still be attractive to many people. (You might need some form of DRM.)

1) Robby we can just write laws, you can declare that all material is legal when distributed through that government site.

2) If you add DRM to the site, it loses any reason to exist, because no one is going to fucking use it.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:29 pm

Kaelik wrote:
TiaC wrote: (You might need some form of DRM.)
2) If you add DRM to the site, it loses any reason to exist, because no one is going to fucking use it.

I agree with Kaelik, DRM* is a fucking reason to go to a piracy site and download jailbrocken software.

* maybe not all DRM, but many DRM makes it hard for the legitimate buyer to use his bought software.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:54 pm

OgreBattle wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Sydney is surrounded by a 15m tall wall made out of steel and concrete. Even so, the bugs and 'saurs make regular attempts to climb over or push through - defending the wall requires constant vigilance. The locks are quite impressive: each side has an enormous metal gear that rolls into and out of place, it looks like nothing so much as a Cardassian space station. Unfortunately, unless you're coming in on the South Entrance, the entire lock area is only 15 meters across, meaning that you can't go in or out with an 18 wheeler. That's why most goods come in and out by boat or through the Train Iris.

-Username17
So, what does this wall and gate look like, I haven't found it googling.

Sydney isn't actually besieged by giant insects and dinosaurs, so the wall doesn't actually exist.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 10:08 pm

Don't feel bad, I've believed stuff that's a lot more outrageous.