Crispin and Andrew, your responses to Ron don't address the main point of Ron's comment which is that the Portland police are misapplying this law. As Ron said, if they were to interpret this law the same way that they are interpreting it in this situation, they wouldn't be able to question anyone about a crime other than the criminal if they could find them with out talking to anyone else. How does the Portland police department have the right to pick and choice when they want to abide by this law...assuming that it should be interpreted the way the Portland police department has decided it should be applied in this situation??? Ron -----Original Message----- From: Crispin Cowan [mailto:crispin@private] Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 11:57 PM To: Andrew Plato Cc: crime@private; Ron_Deming@private Subject: Re: CRIME Kudos to Acting Police Chief Andrew Kirkland Andrew Plato wrote: >Ron_Deming@private wrote: > >>A newspaper >>columnist summed it up pretty well recently: "A rattlesnake >>in the living room tends to end all discussion of animal rights." >> >Speaking metaphorically... > I was taught in college not to speak metaphorically. More specifically, not to *reason* metaphorically. This is because it is all too easy to construct an entirely bogus argument that sounds good. For an analogical argument to be valid, you must (emphasize "must") show that the subject (civil rights) share the property in question (requirement for due process) with the analogy (animal rights). Near as I can tell, animal rights does not have any notion of due process, so the above "rattlesnake" argument is a devilishly persuasive load of crap :-) For an amusing example of how bogus an analogy can be, check out the Monty Python's Oscar Wilde Sketch. "His Majesty is like a stream of bat's piss." http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/8889/poetry/mp-wilde.htm So, bringing it home to secure network design :-) it's ok to use analogies for inspiration or explanation, but be sure that your arguments actually hold up without the analogy. Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com Security Hardened Linux Distribution: http://immunix.org Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
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