I have no idea why she didnt call the cops in 30 days.

How does that make her guilty of murder?

The prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she murdered the kid, which they did not have the ability to do..

I dont see why this is so hard to grasp.

"lol...do yo have any idea how many times you contradicted yourself in that last post?"

Well, in his defense, abge, there are only so many words in the English language. He's got to contradict himself *eventually*.

Also, back to Xinhua (China's state run paper), its reputation has consistently been that it reports events outside of China pretty much 100% fairly. Moreso than most "free" presses. Their coverage of the Israel/Palestine situation, for instance, has been lauded as fair by both sides. And they've been around a while. And, having seen and experienced it during a pretty tumultuous time, yes, they spout propaganda. But to me, it doesn't seem as bad as its made out to be. Mostly lies by omission.

@SD:

I know, hence the concession of that argument.

I admit my position isn't good and has been poorly argued.

Alright?

It happens, sometimes. :p

"I once worked translating China's state-run paper into English, and I would say that I'd consider it fairer than Fox News. Sure, they were careful about which editions hit which regions. But the only serious lies I came across were nothing compared to, say, "death panel." North Korea has a seriously wacky guy in charge, and are far from the only state-run media in the world. It's not indicative of state-run media as a whole."

I have a family memeber who was just in China and a Chinese news reporter claimed the United States was refusing all future Chinese immigrants from the US. Unless i missed something...

@abgemacht:

I know...this thread might be my biggest failure of a post and argument yet. :p

And just College Algebra II...the stuff I failed the last semester, so I'm taking it again this summer in the hopes with one class, as opposed to six, I'll do better.

(And I passed one test already in there, so that's already a new personal best for Math 102, as I failed all 3 tests in there last time and didn't even take the final--the teacher basically said "You're signed up to take it over the summer with me again? Then just don't bother, man, you're already failing" and I needed the time to study for my Physical Geography fina, which I DID pass thanks to the extra time I got studying from abandoning Math 102--but I attribute that to the fact I did something I've enver done on any math exam, ever:

I quoted Shakespeare on it.

Inserting into my papers seems to work exceedingly well in English, so I gave it a shot, and I passed...) :p

SC, can you rephrase that? The United States was refusing all future Chinese immigrants from the US? That seems to not make sense. You mean not allowing Chinese to immigrate to the US? Well, in that case, the US has done that historically several times, and does still operate on a semi-quota system as far as I know, so it isn't far from the truth. No further than death panels. And I can show that reported, as opposed to a friend of a friend story.

it isnt a friend of a friend, its a close family member who does not have a history of lying so you can claim she was mistaken, please dont question their credibility. The story stated that the US was refusing citizenship to all Chinese immigrants. That hasn't happened recently to my knowledge.

Wow I took Algebra II almost 10 years ago. Thanks for making me feel super old.

Right, sure, I apologize for questioning the credibility. I will say that it is entirely likely that was said. I've never claimed Xinhua was 100% authentic about everything. And the US has denied citizenship to Chinese several times in the past and does operate on a form of a quota system as well. It's an exaggeration, but surely not moreso than any number of things you'll see in any American paper or news station.

@abge: Wow. Thanks for pointing that out to me too. Now I feel super old. Although for me it's more like 8 years ago. I think you're older.

If it makes either of you feel better, I was born in 1973, so I think I'm older than you both.

@abgemacht and Smiley:

I was under the impression at least abgemacht was in college as well...neitehr of you two are? (Or are you graduate students, or...?)

@obi

I'm a grad student, but I took Algebra II in HS

@SD

Yes, but I'm just entering that phase where I realize I am, in fact, a real adult. I suspect you've realized that for a while now.

...I'm an adult?

@abge: Yeah, I'm only a rising senior. Took Algebra II in 9th grade.

http://xkcd.com/150/

"But if it's 1 murder in your town vs. 1 murder in Bangladesh...assuming the two murders are "equal" (that is, it's not common citizen vs. assasination of a dictator or anything, then scope of the crime and the nature and status of the victims are relatively equal)...

Do you think most Aemricans will care more about an American death--or a Bangladeshi one?

It's not a cruelty thing...but if you were to feel for every last death the same amount of grief and pain...well, I don't think you'd be feeling all that well--to say the very least--and so we gate all but the most prominent pain for us."

yeah but unfortunately it almost never ends up working out 1 to 1. I agree that "all other things being equal" you have more prerogative to be concerned with more local issues.

But it's usually more like 1 to 50, 100, 500.

Just today - 7 killed in Yemen.
18 rebels killed in Libya
6 dead in Nigeria b/c of shitty building codes.
7 dead in Sichuan floods
22 dead in Syria.
78 killed in Afghanistan

But what's making the headlines of BBC, Al-Jazeera, Le Monde, and AP?

The UK phone hacking thing. Tabloid antics. Libya makes a few, and I got the Afghanistan thing from BBC.

And those are the GOOD sources. I don't even want to see cnn.com, fox.com or abc.com. Jesus Christ.

Today. So far. Reported.

Well I just checked the American sources and they're still freaking out over Anthony. Lol. That actually surprised me I'd have thought even they'd have moved on.

It's what it is.

Well, I took Algebra II in HS too, abgemacht...passed it junior year and was ecstatic, "Oh, yes, hooray, I'll never have to take another Algebra class again!"

So imagine my dismay when I learned...

I did. :p

@Thucy:

True, but even bigger numbers in those cases of foreign deaths can be obscured by time and space...think of all the atrocities and natural disasters that have occured in the last century--how many can you naem off the top of your head?

Porbably a fair few--but that's still probably only half, at best, of the amount that have actually happened, because time and space distance us from the pain, so if it happened thousands of miles away, the "pain" is dulled, just like if it happened "long" ago.

Given enough magnitude, of course, we can still remember and empathize with it...

We still remember Mt. Vesuvias and Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti Incident and The Sinking of the Titanic and so on, these are old, but the scope and now the lore of these tragedies keep it fresh.

The same goes fro The Holocaust or The Armenian Genocide or The Slave Trade and, to pick on American specifically because we're not perfect, The Trail of Tears and Japanse Concentration Camps--big events and, because of the scope, we still remember and empathize.



The average person, however, doesn't even likely REMEMBER the huge quakes that hit China, and will, over time, quite possibly forget what happened in Japan earleir this year (I'd argue they wouldn't even have empathized too much at all, except for...)

Except for, well--

The media.

If an event gets press--oh! is it suddenly going to stick in people's minds!

So Casey Anthony's case is hammered into people's minds hour after hour, and it becomes only natural that this becomes more of a focus for them than when the reader of the news says, totally off the cuff,

"Also in the news today, a truckload of soldiers was blown up in Afghanistan, killing ten and injuring six, and a 6.4 earthquake rocked New Guinea earlier this afternoon--NOW, coming up next, our "Special Panel" debates what Casey Anthony had for lunch the day of the tragedy--THIS is CNN!"

;)

The quakes that hit China right before the Beijing Olympics, to mention Xinhua again, were pretty important politically since they had foreign press there out the yazoo and couldn't sweep some of the stuff under the rug that they usually had. I mean, the poorly constructed schools, for instance, never would have been reported if foreign reporters weren't there (and again, we know for a fact you can say the same about the Jena Six, so it happens in a free press too). So that was a huge moment, geopolitically, and sadly I agree with obi...no one knows ALREADY.

"Also in the news today, a truckload of soldiers was blown up in Afghanistan, killing ten and injuring six, and a 6.4 earthquake rocked New Guinea earlier this afternoon--NOW, coming up next, our "Special Panel" debates what Casey Anthony had for lunch the day of the tragedy--THIS is CNN!"

lol. too right.

Anyway yes time obscures events, but space should not. Every single living person will eventually be forgotten, this I can almost guarantee. Eventually Hitler will be about as well known as Tamerlane.

"Eventually Hitler will be about as well known as Tamerlane."

THERE I disagree, because "Hitler" and "Nazism" and "Facism" have all become an integral part of the Pundit system.

Really--

You see ANY pundit, O'Reilly, Hannity, Anderson Cooper, Olbermann, Glenn Beck, and they want to instantly win the argument, what do they say to their opponent?

"Well, X is like Hitler because bullshitbullshitbullshit."

But never fear, philosophy will be kept alive, as the same goes for Karl Marx.

"Obamacare is an echo of Marxism because FOXNEWSWATCHOURSHIT."

Granted, of course, I HATE Hitler and Marx, for different reasons, but that's the point, isn't it?

They KNOW with 90% of Americans those two names will instantly cause revulsion and anger, and so whatever the converse is MUST be better...right?

And, what's worse...

How many Americans do you think actually have READ either of those men, let alone BOTH?

Suffice it to say that when Glenn Beck went on tirades about Obama being a Marxist fascist...

Those of us with brains and who have actually read a book or two might be able to think "You know, that's sort of a contradiction there, pal, sort of like if you wanted a Democratic Dictatorship--you could MAYBE have that kind of, sort of work...but that's a prettttty big stretch there..."

But most Americans?

"OH MY GOD! THAT'S EVIL! I SHOULD INSTANTLY AGREE WITH HIM!"



One of my favorite quotes, and the reason I agree with Aristotle and Plato and Nietzsche, why I like THEM, and Elitism, even if I tone it down in my own thinking--

H.L. Mencken: "The common man's a fool."

Such is edvidenced by the fools they listen to and the foolish shows they buy into as "the news."

@abge, obi, smiley, SD, et. al. - I took Algebra II in 1982 and was born in 1966. Talk about feeling old...

All the evidence was circumstantial at best. The prosecution did not make a good case at all. No one knows how the girl died. No one knows when she died. And no one knows where she died. There's not even enough evidence to determine who all moved the body.

Do I think a crime was commited? Yes. Does Casey know what that crime was? Probably. Is that enough to convict her? Absolutely NOT.

These celebrity profile court cases get on my nerves. We've too many other important things to care about than a white woman found not guilty of murder.

About 250,000 people expire on the planet each day, violence is usually not the primary killer even when Hitler and Stalin were both in high gear. While I agree that this case is one drop of water in the flood - it serves to capture the imagination and runs counter to survival expectations. Most people never connect that there were over a dozen other gun fatalities in the D.C. area during the same interval of time the Betlway Sniper was active . . .why didn't we have a national level panic over those?

My favorite snarky whiticism on this so far is: she will finally go to jail after she goes to Vegas and steals back her sports memorabelia at gunpoint. Just be patient.

But doncha know she won't have a gun and will claim she didn't know the people she brought with her had guns?

Also, she's gonna be looking long and hard in the nightclubs for her duaghter's killer. In fact, she wasn't partying that month. she was there looking for the real killer.

And is it stealing if you are just reclaiming what you claim was stolen from you to begin with?

P.S. I'm being a smart ass...

Also, she'll write a book about how she would have done it IF she had done it. IF.