Valsuelm

Good luck disobeying a police officer who thinks they have a right to demand of you whatever it is they are demanding and not having violence soon visited upon you then. And if you actively defend yourself from that violence, or even just reflexively react to it so the cop can say you did something threatening, good luck not getting killed. And if that happens I'm sure a thread here will be started, and many people will say killing you was justified because you didn't comply with the officer's demands and then threatened or attacked the officer (they will completely ignore the fact that you were attacked first).

Since they've been mentioned... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHvM8eETMvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drn7wXarm-I I regret missing them on their last tour. I shan't make that mistake again.

Arnold was all words and soft. Jim is more intimidating. (warning: naughty words)

Unreliable I think is an understatement. The guy is a proven liar. These are slightly dated as they don't have all of the information that came to light in Ventura's libel suit, however the pertinent points are still made. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/30/the-complicated-but-unveriable-legacy-of-chris-kyle-the-deadliest-sniper-in-american-history/ http://mpmacting.com/blog/2014/7/19/truth-justice-and-the-curious-case-of-chris-kyle http://www.thedailysheeple.com/american-sniper-lies-and-propaganda-to-divide-a-nation_012015 As for what I'm reading book wise: Non-Fiction - http://www.amazon.com/History-Money-Banking-United-States/dp/0945466331/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 (highly recommended) Fiction - http://www.amazon.com/House-Chains-Malazan-Book-Fallen/dp/0765315742/ref=bseries_primary_0_0765315742 (also highly recommended; probably the best fantasy series I've ever read, and I've read many)

Well in comparison with using physical force I'd generally say no. Which is why I wonder why it's even mentioned alongside it. It is not unusual for anyone in a position of authority is to employ verbal coercion, nor is the employment of such necessarily a bad thing.

Right. How many interactions does the average person have with non-prescription painkillers throughout their life? How many interactions with cops? Sure, odds of dying in a car crash or a work-related accident may be much higher in absolute terms, but it just so happens that people drive to and from work every day. Whether a reported 1.4% of police-citizen interactions where force is involved (including verbal coercion) is too much is up for debate. At any rate, data is difficult to find and draw conclusions from, because in another study, the rate of interactions involving force was 58%, when instead of citizens in general, only police-suspect interactions are considered. I don't know of any meta-analyses that investigate the matter. Resisting, disrespecting or otherwise antagonizing cops seems to increase the odds that they will use force against you by a significant margin (~6 times more likely, from one report). That does not mean cops are thugs, or at least, data doesn't seem to support that assessment. At least, until we define what is a thug and how often does a thug resort to force in interactions with citizens. How does that 1.4% include verbal coercion, and how are we defining it? The majority of my police interactions included verbal coercion as I'd define it (as have the interactions I've witnessed others have with police). Also, while it's not a majority, it's certainly more often than 1.4% that I've witnessed or experienced police using physical force. Is that study considering such benign things as all of the times that people happen to walk by police and maybe say hi as interacting? That's about the only way I can see them coming up with such a low number.

You fail at math. The average based on the data there is about 1114 deaths a year. Regardless, even 500 is no small number given what we're talking about. The police are killing more than 3 people a day on average based on this data, and the data is likely incomplete (though as time goes on and more people are aware of the site it will become more complete). How many of those killings are justified? One really can't say based on the data available, but no doubt many of them are not. For all the people who are horrified at accidental gun deaths, you're almost twice as likely to be killed by a cop than an accidental discharge of a firearm according to 2010 CDC data. But as I've pointed out in another thread, governmental data isn't always accurate, and sometimes even conflicts with itself. In this case the FBI statistics are drastically different from those shown at killedbypolice.net. Not surprising really as the FBI relies on the self reporting of various police agencies in regards to how many people they kill (which I've little doubt is the prime reason killedbypolice.net exists). So far as I can tell though, they fail to mention that fact anywhere in their statistics. Another interesting statistic is to compare police killings of others vs the number of police deaths. The average number of police deaths per year (this includes accidents and job related illnesses) for the period of 2004-2013 was 150. So for every police job related death in a year they kill ~7.4 people. If you remove all definite accidents from the equation (it's inconclusive if the officer was purposefully drowned or accidentally drowned for example, so I left statistics like that in the equation (though it's probably safe to say more if not all of the drownings were an accident)) police kill more than 17 people a year for each one of them that dies by means other than an accident or job related illness. The real number of course is going to be higher than that, but we cannot calculate it with great accuracy due to the limitations of the data. If you compare the number of people police killed during the period for which killedbypolice.net has been keeping track to the number of murders in the US from 2007-2011 (I unfortunately could not find data from the exact same period for comparison, but we're talking averages and they generally aren't going to change that much from year to year), police kill a number of people equal to ~8% of the official FBI homicide rate. And they kill people at a rate of ~12% of the official homicide by way of firearm rate. So you're only about ~8 times more likely to be murdered by someone who isn't a police officer with a gun as you are to be killed by the police, even though there are more than 300 times the number of average citizens compared to the number of police. Another interesting comparison is to compare the police killing people rate with the non-police homicide rate. If we conservatively estimate the U.S. population at ~300 million and go by the ~900,000 number. And then use the 1114 average police killings a year and the average 13774 homicides a year previously calculated and used, police kill at a per capita rate of 27 times the per capita homicide average. So yea.... even by a conservative calculation, police kill more than 17 people a year for each one of them killed in the line of duty by means other than an accident, and at a per capita rate of ~27 times that of the homicide per capita average.

Considering they source everything, if there's anything erroneous it's more than likely due to an article being wrong. The number of deaths it cites in 2014 is 1104 as of this post, not 1966. The 1966 number seems to be the total number of police killings listed on the site since it started tracking them in 2013. There are no accurate governmental figures on how many people are killed by police nationwide, so someone took it upon themselves to start compiling the info. Go them and hooray internet for making it relatively easy.

Fixed. Grrr at those people who won't allow videos to be embedded and force you to go to youtube.

A communist RPG.

Yep, because after they "see what it's like" they can go back and tell their pals all about it. Then they will understand it's barbaric and pointless and stop doing it, right? Does it bother you that human beings brutalize and kill each other, or only when they do it to someone you consider one of the "good guys"? I think Bruce has answered that question before many times. Assaults, torture, murder, theft, destruction, and conquest are all perfectly ok if the UN does it, the UK does it, France does it, the EU does it, or the US does it. These things are even good if they're done in the name of democracy, and especially good if done in the name of 'western values'. He generally only has a problem with it when the talking heads from the US, UK, UN, EU, or France say it's not ok. Or if the someones doing these things have a problem with 'western values'.

@JadedWolf - The track you post is one of my all time faves. Possibly my favorite track from any PC based video game. I only wish it was longer. @Oby - Russia's greatest contribution to the world in the last ~100 years:

Having not played it I cannot comment with certainty about what could be improved upon. That said. The one thing I know for certain that I want to see about the next PoE title is that it is a direct continuation of the story. A true sequel in the sense that BG2 was, where your main character and at least a significant amount of your party members are present.

Not sure if I ever posted this here before or not, but I imagine some here will really enjoy this one:

The anime that put anime on the map in the U.S. Great movie. Great tune. Here's a song from a game that did for a certain game system, what Akira did for Anime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BAycHXiyjE

You guys don't seem to know what 'uppity' is.

And you are a troll.

I'd wager a lot that they're going to diminish the significance of this character in the show. The significance is not easily explained, and the way they've handled Bran's storyline all around really hasn't been good. It's probably the worst handled so far of all the storylines. Season 4 really took a massive turn for the worse I think. For the most part (Rob's girl being the biggest exception) the changes in the first few seasons were understandable for production reasons. ie: Abridging scenes, merging multiple characters from the book into one, Tyrion getting bonked on the head in season 1 so they didn't have to show the awesome battle where he fights rather than is passed out, the conversations on a beach between Davos and Stannis rather than at Dragonstone so they didn't have to spend a lot of money portraying that castle, etc. In season 4 though there are multiple instances of completely new, unnecessary, and really just 'what are you doing producers showing us this crap while at the same time ignoring important story elements'. The Brienne and Arya scene is another example of this. CGI skeletons are better eye candy and people can more readily grasp the significance of the White Walkers than they can the characters that you mention.

And here we have police beating kids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwdzAVLY5QU This is actually all too common. Similar things have happened more than once at the various high schools in my area in the last decade or so. There's really no good reason for the vast majority of schools to have armed cops or security working there.

No NFL Team is worthy of such a good tune.

Ahhh Sinatra. Good song, and no one did it like her daddy did.

I think if you think that applies to the current conversation as it so far has gone in regards to any kind of negativity, you're seeing something that isn't there. That said, I've noted that whenever religion of any kind is brought up on many internet forums, very often some folks get over-sensitive 'ZOMG we're talking about religion! And two people are seeming to be disagreeing! Halp!' It's unfortunate as I think the topics of religions and spirituality are often potentially some of the most interesting conversations to be had. @Marcvs - I never did base that on two people, as I previously stated in this thread, before you joined the conversation. That said, I'll drop this conversation all together at this point as things are being misperceived and this is a topic that folks tend to get passionate about, sometimes hot about. Though I don't think we're even at a lukewarm stage yet, someone apparently already thinks otherwise.

Crime rates in Japan have exponentially more to do with the culture there than the way laws are enforced. This is generally true of anywhere.

Always a sad day when a library goes up in flames.