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The police chief in Wilmington, North Carolina, has publicly lambasted one of his officers. The officer recently pulled over a local attorney moonlighting as an Uber driver and told the driver that he could not film the traffic stop.
"Taking photographs and videos of people that are in plain sight, including the police, is your legal right," Chief Ralph Evangelous said in a Wednesday statement published on the department's Facebook page. "As a matter of fact, we invite citizens to do so when they believe it is necessary. We believe that public videos help to protect the police as well as our citizens and provide critical information during police and citizen interaction."
The statement concluded: "A copy of this statement will be disseminated to every officer within the Wilmington Police Department."
During the February 26 traffic stop, Jesse Bright began filming Sgt. Kenneth Becker when he and other law enforcement officers approached his car. Sgt. Becker, who appeared to be wearing a VieVu body-worn camera, told Bright that a "new law" forbids citizens from filming encounters with police.
"Turn it off or I'll take you to jail," Becker said.
"For recording you?" Bright retorted. "What is the law?"
The officers were unable to cite him the "new law," as it does not exist.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:26AM
Wow. Just wow. You just defined circular reasoning and straw man in the same post. I'm going to update encyclopedias so they can refer to you from now on.
Yes, I was snarky. Yes, I wasn't very pleasant. But there's neither circular reasoning nor straw men in my post.
Let's review.
I said:
If you don't like title case, don't use it.
Nothing circular about that reasoning. Merely a recognition that you can do whatever you like.
Then, I said:
That said, many, if not most, people will judge the value of what you write, at least in part, on how you write it.
Hmm...I have (and I know many who also act in this fashion) reduced the value I place on writing based upon the quality of the usage and style. In some cases, I've rejected such writing outright.
You may disagree with my premise, but again, but my reasoning isn't circular and not a straw man in sight.
I go on to say that:
Your middle school English teacher should have told you that, and your high school English teachers should have deducted points for work that ignored this important lesson.
Assuming you attended college, your English professor upon seeing poorly written and formatted text should have returned such work to you with a comment similar to "I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."
Once again, you may disagree with my pedagogical ideas, even though the first and second points are pretty standard practice. The third was just snark. Once again, however, there's no circular reasoning or straw men here, just me stating my thoughts about the teaching of English and being an obnoxious jerk.
Since these things apparently never happened, I assume you're an American. I am too, but fortunately I had the benefit of a halfway decent education.
This is pure nastiness on my part. Mostly because I'm frequently appalled at the poor educational standards and the horrible outcomes associated with them in my home. I find it quite frustrating in fact.
I don't see any circular reasoning there, either. Nor do I see a straw man. If you do, please enlighten me, friend.
========
So look, I'm questioning whether some established and taught practice (that I'm well aware of and entirely capable of following) makes sense in the first place and you apparently cannot even fathom the concept that it indeed might not as you explain that it's right because it's right and belittle me for being uncivilized/ignorant for who knows what reason, perhaps because I'm supposedly unaware of this almighty great feature of language - a statement which is in direct conflict with my ability of making the post in the first place.
As I mentioned (which was, in fact, the main point of my initial reply), if you find title case to be unworthy of your use, don't use it. It's no skin off my nose. Have (or don't) at it.
I will say that title case is useful in a variety of ways. As one of the elements of style is detailed in The Elements of Style [bartleby.com]:
I'll assume that you see what I did there to elucidate my point.
It would be one thing had you just defended the authority but the way you wrote it goes way beyond that. It's as if your education wasn't all about "never question the education," like for some, but rather "we removed the word question from this year's dictionary." (*)
No, I question quite a bit. in this case, I do see the value in title case. That we disagree is of little moment. In fact, this whole discussion is of little moment, and would likely have petered out had I not decided to be snarky and obnoxious. So I guess it's my fault.
No, I'm not American. I'm one of those smug assholes who use metric system and either-but-not-mixed-endian dates and think that those are better systems because there's a _sensible_ _rationale_ behind them and like to apply similar criteria in other contexts as well. While these might not be the most important questions of mankind how else would you fight against cargo cults in general?
I agree that the metric system is much more rational, especially the metric system which, where possible, I try to use to the exclusion of imperial units. The either-but-not-mixed-endian dates date bit is absolutely more sensible, but doesn't convey, in terms of internal consistency, anywhere near the value of the metric system.
And finally, note that this is not an ad hominem since I don't consider the original argument anymore even the topic but rather your bizarre reply itself - all hail newspaper-case if so be, that's just a detail. Deconstructing the thought process of yours and like-minded people is a much more important matter.
Your unfounded assumptions led you to confuse my obnoxious and snarky rant with certain logical fallacies. No fallacies, I was just being a jerk.
I hope that assists you in your quest to "deconstruct" my thought process, friend.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr