Grew up in Western New York and called it the same thing ("Mumbly-peg"). Though our version was where you simply drop the knife between your feet and then move one foot inward until touches the knife, then repeat until you chicken out. Looks like Wikipedia contains a similar variation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumblety-peg.
Anybody noticed that you can't highlight text on this website? When I try to double click, it pops up an "! ALERT: Content is protected !!". Seems like a futile usefulness oversight, especially since if I really need to, I can:
- copy the text via eyeballs->keyboard
- copy the text from the dev console
- take a screenshot and extract the text with Google Photos or something
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
Copied (below). I'm on a Mac using Chrome. Not sure if that's relevant.
The Federal Aviation Administration is dramatically revising its approach to certifying electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, injecting new uncertainty into the certification programs of the United States’ leading eVTOL developers.
Although the shift comes as the FAA has been broadly rebalancing its relations with industry since the 737 Max crashes exposed its insufficient oversight of Boeing’s certification programs, this recent move appears more geared toward bureaucracy than safety. Specifically, it is driven by a decision to establish operational rules for eVTOLs as “powered-lift” aircraft — a definition that was originally introduced into federal regulations to cover conventionally powered tiltrotors like the Leonardo AW609, in development for the last two decades.
Related: Approaching first flight, Eviation’s Alice readies to test FAA
Until now, developers of winged eVTOL aircraft including Joby Aviation, Archer and Beta Technologies have been proceeding on the assumption that their aircraft would be certified under the FAA’s overhaul of small airplane certification rules that took effect in 2017. Those performance-based regulations were created out of collaboration with industry and kicked off a wave of new entrants emboldened by the opportunities they created to certify innovative technologies.
Now, the FAA under new Acting Administrator Billy Nolen is reversing course, the agency confirmed to The Air Current, a stunning development that appears to have largely caught the industry off guard.
While the full implications of the shift are unclear, it is likely to rattle investors who had believed that the FAA was working in harmony with industry to provide eVTOL aircraft with a clear route to certification — an impression that Nolen himself bolstered in a recent appearance on 60 Minutes.
> I thought murder was the killing of a human by another human?
No, the killing of a human by a (legal) person (which includes both natural persons and all other things subject, in their own being, to the law as an actor rather than mere property, such as corporations) is homicide. For the question to even be coherent, one must presuppose that HAL is considered a legal person — a subject of legal responsibility — but humanity is not required.
Murder is unlawful (phrased another way, “without legal excuse”, self-defense is an excuse, for instance) homicide with malice aforethought. (“malice aforethought” includes, but is not limited to, intent to kill; see, e.g., the felony murder rule, depraved heart murder, etc.)
In many Western legal systems, to prove a crime like Murder there is normally two things the prosecution must demonstrate:
That you A. Carried out the act; typically known as the Actus Reus, and
That you B. Had the guilty intent or mind, typically known as the Mens Rea.
This is why the defense of "insanity" exists in so many legal systems; if you were insane you cannot satisfy condition B and therefore cannot have committed a crime such as murder, even if you performed the act of killing another human while insane.
However, this is a very accademic distinction in practice in most places. There is usually a second slightly lesser crime known as something like "Manslaughter" or "Culpable Homicide", which is in essence a Murder charge without B - you killed someone but it was an accident for example - you didn't actually mean for them to die. Such cases satisfy the Actus Reus but not the Mens Rea of murder, and are therefore often known as a crime other than "murder" itself.
The above is an absolute butchering of Western Criminal law practices, but the general distinction between the action and the intent to perform the action is found in a lot of places, and a Murder charge often requires prosecution to demonstrate both Actus Reus and Mens Rea or the charge cannot stand. The Manslaughter charge is sometimes the fallback position for when proving Mens Rea beyond reasonable doubt for Murder fails.
The elevator pitch for this entire article is really, "Was Hal capable of mens rea - yes or no?" So far no machine has ever reached that bar, at least to my knowledge! No one really doubts a machine can do the actus reus - of course it can.
Note that the intent (Mens Rea) for murder doesn't usually need to be Death.
In England for example the requirement for Murder is you intended at least "grievous bodily harm" and the victim in fact died.
For Attempted Murder, the intent proved must be Death, but for actual Murder, there is no need to show that the perpetrator specifically intended death.
In English, the term murder usually means something closer to "the intentional unjustified killing of a sapient* being."
If it's not intentional, it's not murder, it's an accident. If it is justified, then it isn't murder, it's e.g., self-defense. If the creature killed isn't sapient, then it isn't murder, but it might be animal cruelty.
Note that in order for it to be intentional, the killer must also meet some criteria for sapience, but that's not necessarily the same as being human. For example, in English translations of the Bible, Jesus refers to Satan as "a murderer from the beginning." (John 8:44)
It is not justifiable to intentionally kill people. It is to be expected that some forms of self defence will often - even usually - kill the other party, but that's not intentional killing. Likewise, armed police are trained to shoot to incapacitate opponents. Yes, shooting a person in the centre of mass will sometimes kill them, but, that's not the intent of doing it.
This is maybe less obvious if your government intentionally kills its own citizens for some reason and you've found it important to draw a moral distinction between "We pay government officials to deliberately kill people" and "Murder" but I have no problem saying that's the same thing, stop doing that.
I think you may have left out explaining your asterisk?
I have not heard the definition to be about a sapient being. I always thought it would need to be a human killing a human. Perhaps in fantasy novels it can be a dwarf killing an orch, but in the real world I don't think anything else qualifies. If we include AI in this definition, we put AI above animals, which I think is a stretch for the forseeable future.
It seems like the definition stretches enough for "chimp A murdered chimp B", or even the abstract use "murdered the environment". It's kill, but with an element of premeditation?
ctrl+Up: selects increasingly larger scopes, great for selecting the content of a string literal (either with or without the quotes) or grabbing chunks of call chain
