Figleaf

It would be great if you would pay attention to a the content of a topic before holding forth on it. Defamation is enforceable through the courts. No-one is arguing for permission to defame, I'm merely saying that if defamation is the issue, the teachers can use the defamation laws. Their power over students by virtue of their position is a different conceptual arena from defamation. That's certainly not my argument. I think the teachers are perfectly right to go to parents and point out the discourtesy -- any responsible parent would take their kids to task for being rude to ANY adult, teacher or not. But that's the point -- outside of the school, there's no basis for a teacher to have greater protection or power than regular people.

I'm not sure I'm getting what you're saying there exactly. There is no basis for a school to make up any rules or codes, or apply any sanctions, or use any school resources, that purport to govern student behaviour outside or away from the school context. School authorities are not juvenile morality police or social regulators of youth. They need to focus their efforts and attentions on their jobs, not extraneous pursuits. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ It is absolutely not the role of a school to MAKE life unfair in order to teach students that life is unfair. When an authority punishes expression, it is no longer free. The repurcussion you cite is merely repression. If it was my kid affected by this kind of abuse of power, they school would find itself in court so fast it would make their heads spin.

I don't see why. The issue of handing over detainees involves no criticism of the troops. It is directed at the policy makers who have failed to ensure proper procedures or facilities. I have no idea how you have come to think that. I think you're mistaken. No-one has forgotten that. Canadian taxes continue to be deployed for this purpose. Last time I checked, Canada was a democracy. If the majority of Canadians feels the deployment should end, that is our right to think and carry out, and NOT something an illegitimate military lobby should concern itself with. Policy is not for the military to dictate. Could you be specific about how citizen opinion hampers operational effectiveness? Or the risks to soldiers in the field? That's good. If the citizens you are serving don't want the mission, then the soldiers too should wonder about it. The mission as currently described and resources is futile. It is the duty of citizens to politically assess the propriety of uses of the military. The deployment was initially to discharge treaty obligations respecting the attack on our ally the United States. There does not appear to be a sensible explanation for continuing beyond that purpose and no more military people should be risked pointlessly. Agreed.

Your narrative is sickening. You were a participant at an opinion forum CBC was attempting to operate responsibly. Given the difficulties and technical challenges involved in screening out determined anti-semites, it is disturbing that you employed a clever ruse to first circumvent their efforts and then blamed them for the attempt. What was your objective? What was your real motivation? I see nothing in your behaviour other than sabotage.

1. Even tinfoil provides more resistance than air. 2. The pivot point(s) are at the P's in this diagram: Key- t: top f: floor g: ground W: surviving perimeter support Ptttttttttttt W W W Pffffffffffff W W W Pffffffffffff W W W gggggggg

I have been thinking about this some more. Consider: Four legs. Heavy, rigid tabletop. Leg one becomes critically compromised. Per your comment above, and my comments further above, the entire load shifts to legs 2 and 3 symmetrically (leg 4 being diagonal from leg 1). The load exceeds the strength of 2 and 3. And they collapse symetrically. But since the load was fully on 2 and 3, there's no reason for 4 to give out until it is pulled by the force of the collapsing tabletop in the directon of leg #1.

Reading this thread, the question that I have is whether it is or is not a successful political strategy for conservatives to attempt to create their own private fantasy realm. Will the mystical magical domain of tory narrative draw in sufficient voters to build a CPC majority? If so, it will make an interesting PHD dissertation for some pencil-neck somewhere.

I was simply providing information. I have no specific knowledge at all about the Christian and Missionary Alliance congregations in Calgary and Ottawa, whether they are fundamentalist, evangelical, mainstream or avante garde. Personally, I think it is impractical to attempt to exclude all people who profess a religion from public service. BTW what was the name of the outfit that Stock Day was part of who thought that democracy was against God?

Part of the 'progressive' smear machine, keep perpetuating it and people will believe it. Actually he might be a fundamentalist of some kind, but if he is, he doesn't wear it on his sleeve or bring it into politics like Stockwell Day did. And if he is, so what. Would either of you Brain Trustys care for some actual information? Didn't think so. Oh well, here's this anyway... "Harper, a Presbyterian by background, finds himself spiritually "at home" in Christian and Missionary Alliance congregations in Calgary and Ottawa." http://christianity.ca/faith/profiles/2005/12.000.html

While I am not intending to report this (if I did, I'd be prohibited from mentioning it), I will point out to you that this comment violates the forum rules (q.v.). I'd suggest you use the 'edit' function to amend it. Dancer, Dancer, Dancer ... will you ever READ the forum rules, I wonder? In fact my comment did not violate the rules, which say: "Rule of thumb: Play the ball, not the person". Which is what I did. I'd have PMed you instead of adding to the thread, but you turned off PMs from me. (Fearing further education, no doubt.) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Meanwhile, for those of you who are incapable of drawing even the grossest distinctions, be advised -- May did not compare anyone to the Nazis, she compared them to appeasers such as Neville Chamberlain. There's a major difference there.

Before 1967 the same cr@p was going on. Yes, there was a Palestinian resistance movement before 1967 too. But after the PLO was recognized as the 'official bargaining agent' for the Palestinians there has been a viable route to peace which Israel has not seriously pursued. No, but I wouldn't bomb and occupy the innocent residents of Bernardotown just to get at the Pauls.

WHAT? A minister in the Harper government falsely misrepresented someone's comment to score political points? That's just so totally ... um, expected and within their filthy established pattern.

While I am not intending to report this (if I did, I'd be prohibited from mentioning it), I will point out to you that this comment violates the forum rules (q.v.). I'd suggest you use the 'edit' function to amend it.

Yup. It tips (rotating vis a vis the horizontal) in the direction of the added load. Sort of like when an MP writes in a fax that his resignation was contingent on a negotiation that led to a payment and no official interprets that as receipt of a benefit for resigning.

The question is, how much speed would be needed to create an assymetrical effect? Two problems with that: 1-Indications are that the preponderance of support was in the perimeter, not the core, by a 20:6 ratio. 2-Official story has damage to WTC7 coming from debris from the neighboring building, which would affect the perimeter supports on that side, not the core. It seems to me that for these two points to apply they also require the assumption of impossibly rigid roof and floors. Otherwise the trussing and intact columns would also experience differential forces.

Ockham’s Razor is not a ‘rule’ and is not a principle of logic. In fact, it is not sustainable in logic. It is a conception of probability, and as such is rebuttable depending on actual facts.

From the resistance of the as-yet uncollapsed legs. Remember, their failure is not simultaneous. For any interval between one leg collapsing and the next. It would depend on the duration of the interval(s) mentioned above. ANY interval will cause SOME rotation. Again, ANY interval would impart SOME rotation. The don’t need to tip over to fall asymmetrically. A sideways slide is more likely. Quite the contrary! WTC7 was not afflicted by fires. And it was fires specifically which were cited as the cause of the mysterious symmetrical collapse of WTC1 and WTC2. Absent the specific conditions cited for 1 and 2, there is no proper explanation tendered for 7. Where? The path of least resistance is clearly NOT straight down as your own example specifies – you said the load shifts to the other legs, ergo those legs provide resistance. Thereby destroying the validity of your presumption of a rigid top. It comes from the differential force applied from the underside by the remaining supports, obviously. No, all they need to do is apply a force (even a structurally insufficient force) prior to giving out.

You’re not addressing the point … Skyscrapers are supposedly built with substantial structural redundancy which was only overcome in the cases of WTC1 and WTC2 by the flaming fuel. Absent the flaming fuel, we are told that skysrapers don’t fall from impacts. And they certainly don’t fall symmetrically from assymetrical IMPACT damage, particularly impact damage which, we are told, is insufficient to bring down a building. That makes no sense … PROGRESSIVE failure cannot magically become SYMMETRICAL. I have a lot of trouble accepting that. It seems to me that: (a) the assumption of the perfect rigidity of the tabletop makes for a questionable analogy – if support in one quadrant is lost, isn’t it possible (likely, even) that a warping force might affect the tabletop, no matter how well it is constructed? Is there any substance or composite that is perfectly rigid over a surface area the size of a building footprint? ( if indeed the tabletop is sufficiently rigid, it seems to me that loss of support on one quadrant will not shift instantaneously and perfectly symmetrically to the other three legs – it seems more likely that the two closest to the failed leg will take more strain while the leg diagonally opposite the failed leg could experience a reduced downward strain. Your own explanation shows how you cannot be correct. ‘NEAR simultaneity’ is not simultaneous. Deliberate demolitions use precisely timed detonations because merely NEAR precision will not yield an in-footprint collapse. How? And how likely is it? Again, this makes no sense. The idea that the distribution of load cannot affect the outcome is incoherent. The flaw in your logic is the assumption that the load shifts automatically and uniformly to remaining legs. Oh, come on. Assymetrical distribution of force is MORE likely to produce symmetrical outcomes??? What on earth makes you say a thing like that?

I'm not sure why you say that. Of course the kids don't have money, but their parents should be made vicaroiusly liable if an award is made. More important would be the court declaration that whatever the kid said was false and scurrilous. Additionally, it is likely that any parent confronted with a lawsuit because their kid said something stupid will act quickly to curtail the behaviour. The point I'm making is this ... the authority granted to teacher over the kids WITHIN the school environment does not (and should not) create an authority over them outside of the school environment. Being someone's teacher shouldn't be used to confine them in ways outside of school that do not apply to a non-student. By private I mean outside of the institutional context of the public school. And no, it's not a human rights issue at all. It's an issue of what the limits of a bureaucrat's legal authority are. It matters not one whit WHAT was said (if it doesn't violate a law), whether it's not 'respectful' or whether it's not funny or whether it's the craziest thing ever uttered or whether it's musically unpleasant. As for polluting the learning environment, IT WASN'T IN the learning environment. And the authority over them ends at the edge of the school grounds. I agree the teachers and administrators responsible should be suspended.

This case is like something out of Myanmar. I think it's an outrage, and that the police leader and whoever his pocket jurist is who granted the Anton Piller order should be jailed for their abuses. [A search and seizure warrant granted against Jane Doe?!?!?! How can we even be sure it was executed against the party described to the judge in the application!?!!]

Well, obviously you apply different meanings for each of those respectively. So... Anarchy does not need to be prevented, as it does not exist and cannot exist. It's a theoretical notion without applicability in the real world -- a thought experiment, sort of like irrational numbers, or a stone too heavy for god to lift. Chaos should be prevented because it would stand in the way of most common human wants.

As such, you are defining a question that has any answer. The answer to your question can be a simple YES by virtue of the fact that you are granting the State the right to make any objective it wants -- one of which could be to force submission and indoctrination of its laws. In democratic states, the state should be making or taking only those objectives that accord with the good of the people as they themselves broadly see it. In totalitarians states these strictures may not apply. In either case, it seems to me that the state may perceive an interest in not raising children who are inculcated against it. In the case of democracies, this is arguably legitimate, isn't it? And in the case of both kinds of societies, is in the childrens' interest to be inculcated against it? I challenge you to justify ANY of those as being general objectives of a State. Okay, let's leave aside totalitarian states whose legitimacy would fail on numerous grounds anyway and discuss democratic states, like Canada. The objective of maintaining sovereignty is a default position -- if the populace wants a government, then to meet that want the government will have to sustain itself. Maintaining order and increasing wealth are objectives that I presume citizens would find desireable, and that they may ask government to carry out.

At some time I may have agreed with you. But this is something that we have never had to deal with. Printed rants, made up lies, all aimed at ruining a teachers life. Even the hint, nary a sniff of improper conduct against a teacher can put that person on the outside looking for another job. Schools and admins see it far better to rid themselves of any suspected teachers than to seriously look into and find out about any allegations. The schools would rather just send a kid home for misbehaving, as if confining Johnny to his room, what with his X box, Ipod, 30HDTV, as punishment. I admit I do not have an answer, and I am a strong believer in rights, but these kids are trampelling on someone elses rights, and the liability they have (the kids) is not met by the liability imposed. As for butting out, on matters not dealing with school, or teachers, I do agree. There are schools in the US who have breathalyzers ready and waiting on Monday morning. Suspected of drinking (underage) over the weekend and still have booze in the system..?....busted. Now that is pathetic. Drug testing kids, pathetic , locker searches and police in schools, pathetic. But knowingly trying to ruin a teacher , not pathetic. Some good points Guyser, and I'll give you my thinking on them... If the kids have legally defamed the teacher, then the remedy for that should be pursued. If the kids have threatened or harassed the teacher (within the legal meaning of those terms) then the remedy for those offenses should pursued. But if the behaviour falls short of something the teacher could pursue against any third party, then using the power they have over them in the school is wrong.

Really cos its odd everytime Israel defends itself theres the usual screams of indignation and you know, its all disproportionate. So, it is not the defence, but rather the disproportionality of it, that is the cause for complaint.

If I have it right (someone correct me if I'm wrong) the police contact the crown and tell them they think there is a basis for charges. The crown then assesses the evidence gathered and decides whether to proceed. There is also another method available in some cases and that is to for a private individual go lay an 'information' before a justice of the peace, but I don't know much about it. I think I'll PM FTA Lawyer and ask him/her to join us in this discussion.