Judge Belvin Perry was the presiding judge for the Casey Anthony trial 2 years ago. He recently had this to say:
Judge Belvin Perry told NBC’s “Today” show that he thought there was sufficient evidence for a conviction on a first-degree murder charge, even though much of the evidence was circumstantial.
Anthony was acquitted almost two years ago of killing her daughter, Caylee, following a trial that attracted worldwide attention. She was convicted of making false statements to police and got credit for time served.
When he read the jury’s verdict, Belvin said he felt “surprise, shock, disbelief” and read it twice.
“I just wanted to be sure I was reading what I was reading,” Perry said.
Alright, that sounds fair enough. He has insight into the law and he knows what he’s talking about. At least, that’s what I thought until I read this:
Perry also said he thought prosecutors were better attorneys than Baez, who the judge described as “personable.” All the defense had to do was create reasonable doubt, which they did, he said.
Now, I’m not some fancy lawyer-type, but the last time I checked, if there is reasonable doubt, then, by definition, there was not sufficient evidence for a conviction. I’m pretty sure that’s how this whole criminal justice thing works.
The case of teenager Cameron Dambrosio might serve as an object lesson to young people everywhere about minding what you say online unless you are prepared to be arrested for terrorism.
The Methuen, Mass., high school student was arrested last week after posting online videos that show him rapping an original song that police say contained “disturbing verbiage” and reportedly mentioned the White House and the Boston Marathon bombing. He is charged with communicating terrorist threats, a state felony, and faces a potential 20 years in prison. Bail is set at $1 million.
1. Fuck the author of the article, Mark Guarino, for writing as if teenagers need a lesson in why they aren’t allowed free speech rights. Seriously, fuck that guy.
2. I can only imagine the doltish law enforcement officials participating in the quashing of Cameron Dambrosio’s First Amendment rights regret never seizing the opportunity to arrest Johnny Cash for shooting a man in Reno.
3. The biggest issue here is the fact that artistic expression, an entirely protected right, is being violated for obviously and offensively unconstitutional reasons. That said, fuck fuck fuck Mark Guarino.
I was contacted several months back by someone seeking to include me in a YouTube video about PZ Myers’ personal policies regarding censorship. Basically, PZ has made it a point to insulate himself from most forms of dissent, taking a small contingent of the atheist community with him. Despite what PZ claims, this has caused DEEP RIFTS; there is a splinter in the atheist community where one side is atheism-first, science-first and the other is all about blaming men for the world’s ills while playing professional victims. The PZ side of the matter bears no relation to atheism and most of the people there, including and especially PZ, don’t even know what atheism is. The Gnu Atheism side, on the other hand, is busy making documentaries and staying focused (all the while snubbing PZ). The only positive to take from this split is that PZ Myers’ popularity has declined precipitously over the past several years.
At any rate, the video. I was contacted by video maker C0nc0rdance about my story being included in one of his videos. I was all for it. However, he wanted to maybe do a Skype interview, so I was waiting for him to schedule a time for that. As it turns out, he decided to take a different direction with the video, but I didn’t realize it. The result is that this video has been sitting on YouTube for 3 months and, well, now you know why I never posted it. Check it out. My part begins at around 4:25:
Early Sunday (May 5), just before dawn, we’ll have an opportunity to see some of the remnants of the most famous of comets briefly light up the early morning sky.
The famed Halley’s Comet made its last pass through the inner solar system in 1986 and is not due back until the summer of 2061. But each time Halley sweeps around the sun, it leaves behind a dusty trail — call it “cosmic litter” — that is responsible for two meteor showers on Earth each year. The first of those “shooting stars” displays, the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, will peak on Sunday.
The Eta Aquarid meteor shower occurs each year in early May because the orbit of Halley’s Comet closely approaches the orbit of Earth in two places. The first is the May timeframe, which leads to the Eta Aquarids. The other point occurs in mid-October, producing the Orionid meteor shower.
This may be one of the exceptionally few times where there’s a clear sky and no full or near-full moon where I am during one of these events (or at least it seems that way).
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
~Benjamin Franklin
I’d go a step further and say they’re all bad. We shouldn’t expect a single positive thing as a direct result of the random basis for belief that is faith.
A week after a building containing thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers came crashing down around them, the death toll from the South Asian nation’s deadliest industrial disaster rose above 400.
Workers using heavy machinery are gradually picking apart the huge, splintered slabs of concrete at the scene of the collapse in Savar, a suburb of the national capital, Dhaka. They continue to find and remove bodies, many of them decomposed and difficult to recognize…
There’s confusion about exactly how many people are still unaccounted for in the collapse, Sarwardy said at a news briefing Wednesday. Authorities are still waiting for the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association to provide a list of all the people who were inside the five garment factories in the building when it caved in, he said.
I imagine it will be difficult to procure such a list, what with the need to match the names of human beings up with the cattle-numbers they were likely given. At least Wal-Mart gives name tags to the people it, in reality, considers nothing more than numbers.
I happen to have a job I got, in part, on the basis of my educational background. However, it astounds me the number of employers out there that just do not give two shits about 4-year degrees.
I’ve written a number of times about fatness and obesity. I don’t think it’s wrong to be either one of those, but I do think there is a moral argument that underpins the necessity to attempt to avoid being those things. You get one life. I think people should give it quality.
See what I’m getting at? Guess how much guilt I felt eating that [“prime”] burger the other week… that’s right, none. That’s because I don’t eat that way very often. My diet consists of whole grains, seeds and nuts, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean meats. I watch my portions carefully. That means that now and again, I can splurge. And it just so happens that last week I was in Oklahoma City for a concert with some friends, and we grabbed some McDonald’s beforehand. I had a Big Mac, and it tasted awesome (not remotely as good as the prime burger, but still tasty). On the way back to Tulsa, I got hungry and had McDonald’s again… a grilled chicken sandwich. It also tasted good and I’ve lived through the experience.
This is what a lot of people don’t realize about nutrition. Eating right doesn’t mean avoiding every bad thing out there every second of every day. A person’s health doesn’t hinge on a single meal. A proper diet takes place over time; it’s an ongoing effort. Grabbing that doughnut once in awhile isn’t a sign of hypocrisy for someone who advocates eating well. (More importantly, we shouldn’t dismiss an argument simply due to hypocrisy. Think about it: If a serial killed said murder is wrong, would anyone reject the truth of his argument?) It’s perfectly possible to be healthy and enjoy life at the same time.
When Prospect magazine listed Britain’s leading public intellectuals in 2004 and invited readers’ votes, it was Richard Dawkins who emerged as No 1. Nine years on, the biologist, author and campaigner has bettered that by topping its “world thinkers” rankings, beating four Nobel prize winners (and another contender regarded as certain to receive one soon) in a poll based on 65 names chosen by a largely US- and UK-based expert panel.
Joining him in the top 10 are the psychologists Steven Pinker (3) and Daniel Kahneman (10), the economists Paul Krugman (5) and Amartya Sen (7) and the philosopher Slavoj Žižek (6), who all, like him, figured in the magazine’s first list of world-class thinkers in 2005.
A late run by the octogenarian British physicist Peter Higgs (8) secured him a place in an elite squad containing three other scientists, while the remaining slots are taken by academics turned politicians from the Middle East: Afghanistan’s Ashraf Ghani (2), an economist who served as finance minister after the US-led invasion; Iraq’s Ali Allawi (4), another ex-minister and author of The Occupation of Iraq and The Crisis of Islamic Civilization; and Egypt’s Mohamed ElBaradei (9), prominent in the Arab Spring and now in opposition to Mohamed Morsi.
To qualify for this year’s world thinkers rankings, it was not enough to have written a seminal book, inspired an intellectual movement or won a Nobel prize several years ago (hence the absence from the 65-strong long list of ageing titans such as Noam Chomsky or Edward O Wilson); the selectors’ remit ruthlessly insisted on “influence over the past 12 months” and “significance to the year’s biggest questions”.
Perhaps the most expected name to be nowhere near a list like this? William Lane Craig. This is the difference between a professional debater and people who make a real impact in the world with honestly considered arguments, opinions, and perspectives.
For the Sake of Science 