I was at a drugstore the other day and they had a 12" stormtrooper doll, and I really, really wanted to buy it. I didn't in the end because they'd decided not to put a pricetag on it so I didn't know how much it cost and it was the sort of thing that might be $10 or might be $40. I didn't care quite enough to find out.

It would have looked pretty cool on my desk at work, though.

It's like when you've spent 2 months perfecting your computer build, like this, and someone sees it and says, "That's a lot of BS for under your desk."

It's about respect. The Shetland Sheepdog isn't a toy like the horses. It's a working dog.

Yes it is important the field you work in. You are going to spend something like 40% of your waking hours doing it. If you think doubleshifting manual labour under scorching sun and whips is somehow equivalent to 8 hours in an office environment where you answer phones or w/e, you've lost the thread.

You're right that not everyone can change jobs. You grossly exaggerate what is required to do so, however. Yes, changing between highly skilled careers that required a significant amount of specialized knowledge isn't available to all that many people. But you can't even see the miseries of slave labour from the desk of your first career, they're so far away.

You haven't thought too much about infrastructure and what it would mean to have it removed, have you? Of course infrastructure is a benefit to employers, but that's not relevant to how beneficial it is to the 'slaves'. I expect casual access to electricity, water, and world wide communication would have done a lot for slaves, to name just a few of the elements of infrastructure. I'm honestly starting to doubt your sincerity now.

Slaves had good healthcare? Holy shit. I never expected to hear something like that. I don't need to make a counter point here, as you've ridiculed yourself. American healthcare is shitty -- COMPARED with other developed countries. It is light years ahead of anything that has existed outside the jurisdiction of a government.

Yes, the influential have an advantage. Nobody is disputing that. It doesn't utterly negate your rights across the board. You can still travel. You can still educate yourself. You can still own property. You can still address many grievances by wielding your rights. This list goes on and on. ALL things a slave couldn't ever hope to do. I think the rest of your paragraph should have been moved to the protection from hostility section so I'll address it there.

I was addressing hostility from other slaves. You are probably right in that the tribalism it fosters can be very dangerous where countries clash. In a system without government, spats would result in undending blood feuds, all across the territory ruled by the anarchy, whereas under a state, if they happen across borders they can erupt into something far worse.

I don't agree with the way the US has handled the extremist muslim situation that they mid-wifed in the middle east. But are you going to tell me that you're less safe, now, even after all the alluded too transgressions, than some rural farmer in South Sudan, who is effectively living without any guaranteed rights?

I'm definitely for more compassion and socialism than seen in modern US policy, so I'm not sure what your point is. Are you trying to claim that policies on slave plantations were more generous towards the slaves than our current policies are towards us?

Let's just say that I'm loathe to accept an unsourced opinion than medieval peasantry lead better lives than the average government-laden citizen nowadays. I'm sure there are some points on which they did better. Superstition, sickness, famine, war, flooding. We honestly don't have anything that even compares to these in the modern world. If you could link it or something though, I'd love to read it. It sounds interesting.

These posts are getting too long.

4 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Yes. If you grab a person 1/2 or less your size by the neck, hurl them to the ground while flipping them over backwards, still arm baring them by the neck, then you toss them across the room and jump on them, throwing them as hard as possible across the room into the wall head first, severe injury and/or death are totally foreseeable consequences. (If you look, her head nearly hits the desk behind her, and does hit the ground HARD).
As I clearly said, I 100% believe they would absolutely have charged any person doing this to an officer with attempted murder, and turnabout's fair play. It would have been wholly unsurprising if her neck had broken from that treatment.

It is totally proper to expect that, if one officer can't remove a child (or adult, for that matter) without resorting to violence (and god damn it, a high school girl is a child, so that attempted excusing of the attack falls completely flat), they call a second officer. If 2 officers can't remove a child without injury, call 3. Much better idea, call mom.
Perhaps we've failed as a society when we put actual cops (who have a serious issue with self control and violence lately) rather than trained security guards (EDIT: who don't have immunity or a blue wall to protect them from their own bad action) in schools, or when we resort to the most violent way of dealing with every issue rather than having a little common sense and calling a calm and quiet child's parent.
The reason teacher's can't touch them is to prevent the kind of actions the cop took. It's a protection system for the school and the teacher, to prevent them from being closed/fired by a lawsuit. In fact, it's illegal for a private citizen to touch another person without permission, so why would you want them to take the chance of losing their career and the school?

The fact that both the school system and the police force agree with me give me hope....but not much. The fact that so many people want to either blame the victim or excuse the outrageous, clearly over the top actions of the cop erases that hope.

After hearing the back story, I think the officer's actions were not too unjustified.

The girl was talking on her phone in class and refusing to comply with the teacher's and school administrator's requests to stop. So they called the police and she continued refusing the orders of the officer to get out of the desk. That's when he used force to remove her from the desk.

As Adam Carolla said about this video, "Cops are assholes. That's why you should do what they tell you to do."

If this were to happen to either of my kids when they're in high school, I'd hold them responsible for refusing to comply with the reasonable commands of their educators and law enforcement. But that's just me... and I'm raising them not to be insolent douchebags, but to be respectful and considerate.

I think you gave the easy answer...call her parents. I bet you anything that if mama got on the phone and told her to leave class, she would do it right away. That makes way more sense than calling officer slam (his nickname at the school) to re-escalate a situation that had already calmed down.

Actually, she was not being arrested. She was only being removed, at first. At least that's what's been reported. That means that, at least at first, she was not 'resisting arrest', only 'resisting removal'.

I do agree, force is a FINAL resort, rightfully in the hands of police. My issue is it's often used as a PRIMARY resort (meaning it's often the first thing tried). There were MANY options available to the cop besides violence against a child, he didn't try anything once his command was ignored except unnecessary violence. For instance, he could have, with less force and no injury to anyone, dragged the girl and her desk out of the room and waited her out in the hallway, but instead he chose to react with severe violence to being 'disrespected' by a child.

Saying she 'brought it on herself', to me, is the same as saying abused women 'bring it on themselves' by not capitulating fast enough to their abusive spouses, and abused children 'bring it on themselves' by not being perfect at all times.
Even if you want to call what she did 'resisting arrest' (which I think I've already debunked, but may still be questioned), the force used was SO out of proportion and unnecessary that this officer has already been banned from all schools in the state, and will likely lose his job and money in the end. If her fellow students had not risked the same treatment by pulling out their phones and recording his actions, we would never have heard about this, and the poor girl would have a record for assaulting a police officer instead of an FBI investigation against the officer. That sounds like one more instance where always on-body cams might have defused the situation, because KNOWING he was on camera, I bet he would not have acted so rashly against a calm, non violent child.

EDIT: He's now been fired.

Not a single amendment to the Net Neutrality bill passed, so we're stuck with a piece of shit legislation full of loopholes.

What you hear is the sound of my forehead slamming into my desk, repeatedly.

Where's the slow motion of the rear of the cart spraying the foam off of a latte cup left artfully at the edge of the desk? and the time shifted clip of the guy in an office chair flying over his head between two desks in a monkey suit?

I sit at a desk all day, and I produce work that's seen or used by millions of people, so I take issue with that statement!

How cute. If I sat behind a desk all day I could dream about that too but I live in the real world. You know, where you have to move your ass to make shit.

It really depends on your occupation, I suppose.

When I worked in the game industry we had monthly deadlines that had to get met or the publisher would pull their funding and the developer would go belly up. Sometimes we could meet those deadlines comfortably. Sometimes things would go wrong and we'd have to sleep at our desks or be out of a job because the company wouldn't be there in the morning if we didn't get the work done.

Other occupations, like firefighting, have the opposite problem--lots of downtime with sudden intense bursts of activity.

But I suppose any job that is a typical 9-5 gig could benefit from examining what the companies in this video have done.

So, unconstitutional arrest = civil rights lawsuit and desk duty/dismissal, right? I hope so, but the DA's comment seems to indicate he thinks the judge is being swayed by public opinion against (abusive) cops, and he indicates he thinks the officer did nothing wrong, so the cops probably feel the same, but more strongly. That's so f**ked up, the cop was obviously over reaching at every turn.
I hope he gets mad cheddar outta 5-0...the fancy extra sharp kind.

If you don't want people (male or female) looking at your boobs, why wear a tight dress that barely contains your breasts and has a plunging neckline? Men are both biologically engineered and culturally trained to look, especially if you're going to do the fashion equivalent of putting a fucking spotlight on them.

And no, I don't believe women need to "cover up" or wear burkas or some such strawman that'll I'll likely get as a reply to this comment. Women can go around naked for all I care, but they shouldn't expect heterosexual men to pretend like they're fully clothed.

EDIT: OMG, Andy's response is perfect! He gets a big bouquet of flowers and puts it on Conan's desk right in between Conan and Nicole and says "Hey Nicole! Ignore the flowers!" LMAO.

@ant Here's the full interview if you're interested in including Andy's comeback:

Heh, should have ticked the sarcasm box. ; )

From the look of it, it's a very small town hospital so I'm guessing that it's probably a bit rough and ready. Probably have the triage nurse on the desk and one doc out the back so any mess get's left for the next morning.