I'm not into speculation you wrote.. " ... Buzzfeed News spoke to Brandon Brooks, who uploaded the video to Youtube. “I think a bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don’t live in the neighborhood were in the pool,”...." , The term " I think" is not a fact.



READ what I SAID.

..."It does not say that white or blacks were fighting. Since the cop was gathering up black kids it appears that they were the uninvited guests and some broke out in fighting. The video or text does not say just that juveniles were now actively fighting. More info is needed."


You have knee jerk reaction to see that all things are racist. I look at all things subjectively and just look at facts at hand. That makes you the racist and me intellectually superior to you.

Did the cop need to control the situation - yes.
Did the cop over react- yes - But how would he reacted? Every one scattering and running , not obeying, Cop being over heated with 30 lbs of gear, wearing black clothing making him even hotter.
Should he loos his job - No.

If all the kids obeyed do you think these events would have been more peaceful?

Your entire theory of the universe is speculation....including your theory on what I'm OK with. Certainly your theory on deities and the after life...complete and total speculation based on belief, not fact.
I find this video's hypothesis terrible. Because a measured physical property is near what they say they expect it might be if we artificially created the universe implies they know what the constraints of a mythical artificial simulated universe are (that's impossible, if it's an artificial creation, there are no constraints other than those programmed in, and they could be ANYTHING if the programmer is writing the laws of the universe/physics).

Therefore, I am NOT OK with the HYPOTHESIS that the universe is a computer program or designed by a designer (other than the 'designer' that is the laws of physics). I find it a silly blind guess about something we can't possibly know about without creating one ourselves, and even then we'll only know about the one way we did it, not the possible ways it could happen.

A programmer would certainly not be a god to me, but I'm not prone to deifying that which I don't understand. It MAY be a mysterious being (or not), that doesn't make it god anymore than I'm god to my dog. Because some dogs are gullible enough to believe their master might be a god does not make him/her one. The same goes for unknown properties of the universe. Some people may believe the unknown is somehow proof of the divine, that simply does not make it true, or even reasonable.

That's speculation, but it would mean intelligent design is a scientific theory. You're seemingly okay with the Universe being designed by a programmer, but not God, although the programmer would be a god to us in every practical way.

Absolutely. It's a mistake to make assumptions about what AI will be like. The doomsayers too often attribute human qualities to it. It's like speculating about alien intelligence. It will come in bits an pieces as we understand it more. My own guess is that, not weighed down by long obsolete genetic imperatives and human psychological pathologies, it will most likely be (in its higher form) an extraordinarily capable problem solver and prognosticator. It will lack the human flaws that typically motivate the killer AIs of science fiction. Of course, it will probably have it's own unique flaws. I do think it's wise to be wary of software that has developed beyond our capability to understand it (much as we don't understand the workings of our own consciousness).

Probably my primary concern about robotic weapons comes from a DARPA proposal I read about some time in the past. What they wanted was an autonomous, bird sized UAV. It would contain surveillance equipment and sensors, and be able to share the data it collects through a mesh network established with it's fellows and the commanders as well as receive orders. It would be intelligent enough to find a suitable strategic vantage point and hide itself. From there it would simply observe. With a large enough swarm of these, perhaps many thousands, you could send them into a city at night. They would each also potentially carry a small warhead allowing them to launch themselves at and destroy threats. Once these robots were entrenched, which might only take an hour or two, whoever controls them would effectively rule the city. Even if they were cut off from their command structure, they might still retain enough intelligence to recognize a particular individual, someone in a forbidden area, someone holding a weapon, or someone not brodcasting the right IFF signal, or any number of things. There might be no defense against such a thing (though there probably will be).

To me, that concept is terrifying. It's not huge hulking terminator-like war machines that could be the greatest threat, just flying, self-guiding, intelligent hand grenades. All someone would need is the capability to manufacture them. No raising an army, no speeches or threats, just a factory and a design. It's also not too far fetched to believe this capability might be available in just a matter of a few decades. They'll be easier to build than nuclear weapons, and oh so convenient and easy to deploy.

Um.... anyways, I dunno where I was going with that. Just lots of random pontificating, but because it's technology, it's silly to try to stop it with legislation. It will happen, as ChaosEngine rightly points out, the best course of action is to be on top of it and to understand it.

Of course, you don't know the draw of her bow. You can only speculate. In other words, you know nothing, Jon Snow.

Jalopnik and reddit have speculated, and both point to xkcd 413 as a possible inspiration.

http://jalopnik.com/the-new-star-wars-droid-is-not-cgi-so-how-does-it-wor-1698461524

I think what's happening is that the cops see this stupid criminal behavior day in and day out, they risk their lives, and the lives of innocent people are risked, and nothing really happens to the criminal. I mean, he goes to court, or skips court, or gets a fine, or gets sentenced, then goes to jail perhaps, for a week, or a month, and it's not really punishment. It's 3 squares a day, and basketball, so the cops feel like, hey, let's tune this bastard up a bit, maybe next time he'll think twice before doing something stupid.

Now, I'm just speculating, but I bet there's a good chance this is what happens. For instance, a few weeks ago I got into a vehicle pursuit of a woman who was passing bad checks halfway across the country, we chased her for a good 10 miles at pretty high speeds. She finally gave up, she goes to jail, it's a non-violent crime so the judge gives her a court date and lets her go. This fucking broad was homeless. We'll never see her again. And all those innocent people on the interstate, and the cops chasing her, took chances on physical injury trying to bring her to justice. We brought her to justice but the court just opened the door for her.

I think that the noise being picked up by the recorder makes it sound a lot worse than what it is. In my opinion, he's only really patting next to the baby.

Would it not be fair to say that clapping is a roughly equivalent action? And i see people doing that near babies all the time without someone worrying about affecting the kid's mental state as it grows up, or worrying if the kid perceives the clapping of hands as a threat or worry.

If babies are too young to understand, then they may misunderstand clapping? Or alternatively how are they to understand the waving of someone's hand nearby to be aggressive? Especially given that it appears to be a comfortable family unit.

Most importantly, can we please consider that the baby was slapping its own leg? Perhaps one day the baby slapped its hand about, the father did the same thing, and the baby got enjoyment out of it? It slaps its hand about again at the end too. We don't know, we can't know, and it's very unfair to make so many casual assumptions - not just about his actions, but about what is normal for different people.

I'm concerned about the amount of assumptions being made in chastising this man. Especially when drawing a parallel to an anecdote about someone "growing up skittish" because of "teasing". Correlation, not necessarily causation.. and again, what evidence is this of teasing, and how is it fair to speculatively compare it to something stated so vaguely?

I'm sorry to be combative about it, but i feel this is a huge leap of imagination based on 30 seconds of video. A great many of us (if not all) could be made to look all kinds of contrary ways based on 30 second snippets, and it's an indelible brush that he's being hurriedly tarred with. I stand to be corrected, but i don't see any signs of distress either from the baby or the person recording, and the baby looks otherwise healthy and well provisioned. It was not placed in that seating with those accoutrements without care and attention. I think more harm than good can come of judging things like this, considering the subtlety of most *actual* abusers.

From teh Interwebs in case you're thinking the octopus is being abused:

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A giant male octopus caught on cell phone video scaling his glass display tank at the Seattle Aquarium and reaching several tentacles over its open top has sparked Internet speculation that the massive mollusk was trying to mount an escape bid.

But aquarium officials say the octopus, named Ink, was not attempting a jailbreak in the video, which has gone viral on the Internet, but simply learning to embrace his new home with all eight arms.

"It was not an escape attempt," aquarium spokesman Tim Kuniholm said of the video, in which Ink inched his way up the cylindrical glass tank to squeals from onlookers. "It's a new exhibit and the animal was exploring his boundaries."

A Seattle aquarium employee later put Ink's arms back inside the case, and a so-called "evening cap" was fastened on top to help keep the curious fellow in place, Kuniholm said.

"Octopuses are very inquisitive by nature, and in this case ... Ink is an overachiever," he said.

Ink is one of two new giant Pacific octopuses on display at the aquarium. Found in Puget Sound, they are the world's largest species of octopuses, weighing on average about 90 pounds (41 kg) and measuring 20 feet (6.1 meters) across.

Kuniholm said the two male octopuses are kept in separate homes at the aquarium because the species is solitary by nature, with males and females coming together only to mate during their short 3-to-4-year lifespan.

In the next year, Ink will be released back into the wild as part of an ongoing education and conservation program for the species, the aquarium said.

(Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Sandra Maler)

How fucking broken does the police force need to be for this to happen to an elderly, skinny man? HOW FUCKING BROKEN?!

The police are not there to give out punishment. They are there to bring the guilty before the courts. They have certain powers to issue tickets, but beyond that it is not their place to decide if someone is to be punished or not. That's the court's job.

Even if they had watched the guy do something illegal, if they have hold of him and he is no threat to them there is no reason, at all, for them to use any force beyond what is necessary to get him before the courts. None. This guy was no threat at all physically. Even if he was swearing and abusive, even if he called the officer's mother a whore, or his kids fucking retards it doesn't matter. The police should be above that. They should record it, make sure there's evidence of it and bring him, safely and with as little force as necessary before a judge.

At what point did America hand over the rule of law to the police? At what point did they make it OK for the police to dole out physical punishment? Even if the guy had done something illegal they can't just choose to hurt him.

The fact that not only had they not seen him doing anything wrong, and the call to them didn't allege any crime, just a suspicious person, and that person turned out to be a skinny Indian granddad who had done nothing wrong and posed no threat at all and the TRAINING OFFICER felt it was OK for him to throw the man to the ground shows the system is completely and utterly broken.

I hope this guy gets the book thrown at him. I hope his life is fucked. I hope this piece of shit goes to prison and gets his fucking ring torn to fucking shreds.

But most of all I hope that that isn't seen as and end to it. I hope that cases like this will lead to real reform of the police service in America because it fucking needs it. I've heard the 'few bad apples' bullshit and it's bollox. This guy did an appalling thing, right out in the open. He clearly believes that it's OK and that he won't get in trouble for it. We can all speculate as to what would happen with this case if there hadn't been video footage of it, and you can believe they'd still be prosecuting if you like. Good for you, you fucking idiot.

All police need to be held to account all the time. they need to be wearing cameras, and there needs to be strong sanctions against those officers who's cameras just happen to have been left off, or keep breaking or whatever else they come up with.

Eurogroup meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. Speculation reaches from "Oh, the humanity!" to "Abandon ship!"... which basically guarantees that fuck all will happen tomorrow, everything's going to be postponed.

She was someone who was trying to sell records and whose record label and management were adamant of the necessity to stay in the closet. Not the same thing as a private person.

If you listen to it again with that in mind, that she has been instructed to stay in the closet by folks eager to make money off her... she is subversively brilliant, I think. About as out and proud as you can be inside that straitjacket.

I remember when she came out of the closet. She was on the cover of a magazine, displayed prominently at the grocery store checkstand. Two women in line in front of me saw the cover. They were shocked -- SHOCKED I SAY -- that k d lang was a lesbian!

Different times. Nobody would be shocked today. She wouldn't be in the closet today.

I mean, look at Adam Lambert on American Idol. As gay as anything, and even he took a while to say it. (I think. I don't watch the show but I seem to remember huge speculation and then he finally just said it.)

And that was just a couple of years ago.

And that is why they couldn't just say it. Arsenio helped her say as best he could, she said it as best she could, within the constraints of the times.

That's odd, because we've seen you make numerous definitive statements about exactly what happened in this case. Are you saying now that all your 'factual' statements about this case were really just speculation?! (because you could not have read the transcript yourself if you don't know if it exists)
If so, that's an improvement in my view. For my part, I have tried to be clear that my posts are my speculation based on available evidence (perhaps I have failed to be clear, but I made an effort). I was not there inside anyone's mind, so I can't KNOW anyone else's true viewpoint.

It is not speculation to say things were not handled in the normal methods for a grand jury. We know that definitively from what the DA said in his own press conference and from the evidence he presented (which reportedly IS publicly available information).
Also it's clear from the simple presentation/application of a law that was found unconstitutional 30 years ago, before he was even a lawyer. It wasn't a mistake, he had to search for that long removed law in law history books to even bring it up, it's not like he had ever used that law in the past and just didn't realize it was no longer law, it had not been law for 30 years. That's important, and clearly either clear disbar-able misconduct or complete disbar-able incompetence, I can't see a third possibility, if you do please enlighten me.

Civil rights cases take a long time to build before you take them to court, sometimes years, and sometimes it's impossible. In many cases, even though the CHARGE of a civil rights violation is true there's not enough proof of it to make a legal case, often (not always) due to the entire department closing ranks, hindering the federal investigation, and sometimes even destroying evidence. I think you know this.

We found another point of agreement. To me, when one jumps from disagreement on an idea to personal name calling, the name caller is admitting defeat in the debate and is just being a bad loser. I think most of us are guilty of that at one time or another, but some use it as an MO for life.

Is there a transcript from the GJ proceedings? Unless there is, all this speculation is simply...speculation.

Also, if all this speculation is true, then why doesn't Eric Holder file a civil rights complaint against Wilson?

Also, accusing someone who disagrees with you as a knuckledragger is being discriminatory to Neanderthals.

DrewNumberTwo, I see where you're coming from. Perhaps when can come together in supporting the proposition that police officers routinely wear body cameras.

And jmd, I would agree that I've certainly seen worse when it comes to homemade police encounter recordings. My general annoyance is directed at a group of predominantly adolescent/early 20's males who find ways to be obnoxious and disruptive toward law enforcement officers while avoiding breaking the law, and then equate legality with morality. I would not classify this instance as disruptive in itself, though I speculate that it represents a more general pattern of disruptive behavior given the officer's allusion to other incidents at the police station. I appreciate that my speculation is just that, speculation.

Lastly, I will say, particularly after reading the video taper's post on YT, that the bigger concern here is the police officer's behavior. Wielding the powers invested in a position of privilege as a means to retaliate against someone for personal grievances is reprehensible.