Markdoc

In Norway, all tax returns are public. Anybody can see what anybody else earns. Doesn't seem to have caused a problem. Some companies have an open pay policy. It also doesn't seem to cause problems. Many companies and institutions have fairly tight salary bands and which band you sit in is public.
 
The obsession with pay secrecy is an artifact of a system that rewards those who control often arbitrary pay awards. It's not naive to note that other systems are possible and appear to work as well or better - that's just recognition of reality. My last job was one were both payscale and bonuses were largely transparent (meaning pay grade and annual bonus were public, though the precise figure was not). My colleagues knew I earned more than they did, but there was no resentment because they also knew why. I knew who earned more than I did, and approximately by how much, but the same applied. So no, not naive - just aware.
 
Just because something is the status quo does not make it inevitable or the best system. I admit I'm hard pressed to think of a good reason for pay secrecy, even though I understand why it's a sensitive topic.
 
Blaming her for the fact that someone else might (but in fact, did not) take her initiative and use it wrongly smells strongly of grasping for a reason to blame her for something. You could use exactly the reason to claim that the accounts department should not release figures internally, because hey, what if someone leaked the company accounts?
 
When a group decision is made (for example company policy), of course there is pressure to join in. That is equally true of the "don't discuss salaries” rule.
 
I'm guessing from what you wrote, that you didn't read anything about this situation before posting, which to be honest, is a bit of a disappointment. To spell it out, the bonus she was denied WAS RECOMMENDED BY HER PEERS PRECISELY FOR SETTING UP THE SALARY SPREADSHEET. The colleague who worked with her to set it up WAS RECOMMENDED THE EXACT SAME BONUS FOR THE EXACT SAME REASON. There is, in this case, not the slightest shred of a reason to assume that he did something different to get his bonus - in fact, we are explicitly told the opposite. And to honest, the amount in question was utterly trivial, which means this whole discussion is almost certainly not about the money but about fairness.
 
To me, it doesn't look like what she did was counter to the company's wishes, but I can see reasonable grounds to disagree. But when one colleague gets a bonus for an initiative, and the other is denied a bonus for doing the exact same thing, that starts to smell a bit dubious. At the very least, it strongly supports her claim that pay is not being awarded on the basis of merit.
 
Cheers, Mark

Oh, I'm sure it'll prove to be useful. As you note, we are finding more and more diseases (allergy, cancer, heart disease, asthma, etc) can have an infectious cause, or at least trigger) so more information will help us plan for better health. But that's more long-term research: it's not likely to have any impact on how people interact with their doctors in the immediate future.
 
It's kind of like the hoopla around personal gene sequencing. Companies were promising "better control of your health" and similar scams if you paid to have your genome sequenced, but without far more information, your genetic sequence usually tells you little or nothing about your health or prospects. One day, that probably won't be true, but we're not there yet: we simply don't know enough to put most of that information in context.
 
So, in both cases, big steps forward in the accessibility of a useful technology, but some way away from practical applications. Even though we're not there yet, we're close enough to be able to see how this will likely play out, in .... let's say 10-15 years. You can get a genome sequence (that's your baseline), an infectious disease/vaccination profile (that's your immune history) and a sequencing of a sample from your bowel and mouth/sinuses (that's a glimpse of your current microflora) and from that collection of information plus a checkup and a diet/exercise checklist generate a "health profile" (what your risks are) and a "druggable profile" (how you will likely respond to different classes of medication).
 
We're actually kind of doing much of this, right now, in a baby-steps sort of way, but at the moment there's no way to combine all that information into a coherent whole. It's like all the groups working on this are each writing one page of a single novel - but without page numbers and in different languages/editions/size formats. It's going to take a while to synthesise it correctly so that we can read the novel.
 
cheers, Mark

It's a new technology, and if it can be done for 25 bucks a test, it's about 5-10% of the price of current tests that do the same thing, so that's pretty cool.
 
How useful would it be? For high risk patients (like transplant patients) we already do this type of test, but that's not for diagnosis. It's for planning future treatment. The drawback of this new test (like the old tests) is that it relies on antibodies. Normally, it takes 2-3 weeks for your body to generate a measureable antibody response. So the test will tell you what you've had, but not necessarily what you have right now.
 
That could still be useful - especially as we collect more information on how individuals respond to infection and long term risks of infection - but probably won't have an immediate effect on medical practice.
 
Cheers, Mark

It's a new technology, and if it can be done for 25 bucks a test, it's about 5-10% of the price of current tests that do the same thing, so that's pretty cool.
 
How useful would it be? For high risk patients (like transplant patients) we already do this type of test, but that's not for diagnosis. It's for planning future treatment. The drawback of this new test (like the old tests) is that it relies on antibodies. Normally, it takes 2-3 weeks for your body to generate a measureable antibody response. So the test will tell you what you've had, but not necessarily what you have right now.
 
That could still be useful - especially as we collect more information on how individuals respond to infection and long term risks of infection - but probably won't have an immediate effect on medical practice.
 
Cheers, Mark

Eh. You can understand the reason for the ban in 3 letters ...IPO. 
Etsy's planning to go public and the last thing they want is a lawsuit (or even the possibility of a lawsuit) because someone claims the love potion they bought turned out to be an ordinary level 1 potion of cure light wounds. 
 
Or more seriously, a lawsuit because people are selling services that - let's be honest here - are outright scams, like claiming to sell a love potion. They're marketing a service via which craftspeople sell tchotchkes - not high priestesses sell magical spellcasting services. As long as they don't target one group or religion - by banning, for example high priestesses and not pastors, then I'm good with it.
 
The petition to rescind it makes perfect sense as well: after all, scammers are selling these services and someone is buying them. I'm not surprised that they're annoyed. This is how some people make their living, or at least a little cash on the side - now they're going to have to go over to craigslist or somewhere similar. For their customers, the direct implication is that they are being scammed with the extra gloss that it could be seen as their religious practices being made light of.
 
cheers, Mark

Eh. You can understand the reason for the ban in 3 letters ...IPO. 
Etsy's planning to go public and the last thing they want is a lawsuit (or even the possibility of a lawsuit) because someone claims the love potion they bought turned out to be an ordinary level 1 potion of cure light wounds. 
 
Or more seriously, a lawsuit because people are selling services that - let's be honest here - are outright scams, like claiming to sell a love potion. They're marketing a service via which craftspeople sell tchotchkes - not high priestesses sell magical spellcasting services. As long as they don't target one group or religion - by banning, for example high priestesses and not pastors, then I'm good with it.
 
The petition to rescind it makes perfect sense as well: after all, scammers are selling these services and someone is buying them. I'm not surprised that they're annoyed. This is how some people make their living, or at least a little cash on the side - now they're going to have to go over to craigslist or somewhere similar. For their customers, the direct implication is that they are being scammed with the extra gloss that it could be seen as their religious practices being made light of.
 
cheers, Mark

Because their attitude - not always, but often - is that their authority is absolute and may not be questioned: and that therefore any interaction with the public is fraught with potential for trouble.
 
I know, anecdote, not data, but here's an incident that has stayed with me lo, these many years, that illustrates it perfectly.
 
Years back when I was still at NIH, I was working late. It was winter, snowy and cold. As I came out and headed for my car, I saw a cop parked at the roadside* who suddenly told me to stop. Thinking he was wondering what I was doing there, I held up my security badge and said "It's OK officer, just been working late" and he said "STOP!" in a much louder voice and put his hand on his gun. I stopped. When I asked him - politely - what the problem was. He said "The parking lot's all icy. You should go around".
 
Seriously? He put his hand on his gun to ensure I was walking safely? What was he going to do if I walked on the parking lot? Shoot me? It wasn't about his personal safety - I was 30 feet away from him and walking parallel, not approaching, not fleeing.
 
Now in all honesty, I doubt he actually meant to threaten me: he was trying to be helpful. I think it was simply a reflex - he had issued a command and I had not complied! Therefore - gun. It's like the old saying - if the only tool you have is hammer ...
 
Cheers, Mark
 
*This was before they put up the giant security barriers and such **** around the campus

Plenty of people (gay and straight) already get married outside church, so I doubt that the state has much interest in forcing churches to marry gay couples. It's always possible that individuals might sue but I'd rate their chances of winning such a suit somewhere between zero and nothing - meaning the issue will never get anywhere near the Supremes.
We can estimate the outcome of this decision, and the likely outcomes are summed up in this handy graph (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rDtD2GFR2wQ/T9ecKo7jQhI/AAAAAAAACQc/2Dj3NZfUiNw/s1600/consequences_of_gay_marriage.png)
 
Cheers, Mark
 
Edit: and I should note that in a number of countries where gay marriage was made legal (eg: New Zealand, Denmark and others), and some church groups campaigned against it, post-legalisation, those same groups are quietly adopting "rules of conscience" allowing gays to get church services anyway, if the pastor is agreeable. I mean, marriage licences, and their money is as good as anyone's, and pastors have bills to pay too, and etc, etc. Obviously, not everyone is going to change their stance, but removing gay marriage from the political agenda (via legalisation) allows a lot of the fear and angst to drain out of the issue.

Plenty of people (gay and straight) already get married outside church, so I doubt that the state has much interest in forcing churches to marry gay couples. It's always possible that individuals might sue but I'd rate their chances of winning such a suit somewhere between zero and nothing - meaning the issue will never get anywhere near the Supremes.
We can estimate the outcome of this decision, and the likely outcomes are summed up in this handy graph (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rDtD2GFR2wQ/T9ecKo7jQhI/AAAAAAAACQc/2Dj3NZfUiNw/s1600/consequences_of_gay_marriage.png)
 
Cheers, Mark
 
Edit: and I should note that in a number of countries where gay marriage was made legal (eg: New Zealand, Denmark and others), and some church groups campaigned against it, post-legalisation, those same groups are quietly adopting "rules of conscience" allowing gays to get church services anyway, if the pastor is agreeable. I mean, marriage licences, and their money is as good as anyone's, and pastors have bills to pay too, and etc, etc. Obviously, not everyone is going to change their stance, but removing gay marriage from the political agenda (via legalisation) allows a lot of the fear and angst to drain out of the issue.

Silverman's satire missed its mark. The rape prevention tips that colleges hand out to the women who are their students look just like this, and they are ridiculous and should be ridiculed. They put the onus entirely on women to not be raped, which is a bit lol giving deer tips on how not to be hunted. The trouble is that being a victim, or better yet a martyr, has become such a perceived position of privilege that everybody gets all butt-hurt about misandry and misses her point entirely.

I think this is one of the keys - you could more simply say that in most S&S magic happens "off stage". It happens, but it's not the protagonists doing it. The various characters in classic S&S generally live in worlds with plenty of magic – if it’s not wizards, it’s elder horrors or eldritch creatures – but they are not themselves generally magical or magicians. Conan’s the prototype, of course, but there were plenty of others in the same vein. It’s not all sandals and loincloths, either: Conan (and plenty of others) spent as much time leading knights in plate armour as he did careering about as a mercenary in a mail shirt.
 
But things have changed since the classic days. Fafhrd and the Mouser are mid-period S&S, but even though the Mouser started as an apprentice wizard, in the few stories where he uses magic, it inevitably goes wrong, and he does most of his problem solving with his brain (not his best part, actually) or his sword. It’s still classic S&S fantasy. Elric, on the other hand, was a deliberate attempt to move away from the classic S&S genre. Where Conan is manly, and brawny and decisive, Elric is sensitive, feeble and pensive. Where Conan triumphs by force of arms and things - no matter how dark – resolve themselves in the end, they almost inevitably go pear-shaped as soon as Elric draws a blade. Where Conan – though a barbarian – is innately decent and honest, Elric – though an educated nobleman - is conniving (also petulant, vindictive and petty). Conan starts from nothing and ends up a ruler. Elric starts as a ruler and ends up (quite literally) with nothing. And most of all, Elric is a sorcerer. Unlike Conan, he’s a swordman entirely by accident and necessity.
 
I think that’s where things started to diverge. For me at least, Elric was a break from the tropes of S&S – certainly Moorcock has said explicitly that was his intention - and represents a new genre (I call it Epic Fantasy, for want of a better word). Like any genre definition, the edges are a bit fuzzy, but the whole Conan/Kull/Brak/Fafhrd and Mouser genre is mostly about the main character and their particular trials and tribulations. If Kull dies, he loses the throne. But Elric and the whole Eternal Champions team/Corwin of Amber and their ilk, in contrast are typically fighting for the survival of the world and/or universe as we know it. If they fail, everybody dies. And I don't think it's a coincidence that in Epic Fantasy, some or all protagonists do have magic powers.
 
So while both types of stories involve plenty of sorcery and plenty of people getting stabbed with bits of pointy metal, the whole atmosphere and style is very different. 
 
 
cheers, Mark

To be fair, there are precious few warriors in there as well - most of the "heroes" are either tricksters or lucky fools. It's certainly not traditional S&S  - it's more fairy-story like: the heroes in the stories are usually underdogs who win through by luck and their wits than through a strong right arm. Even the more active heroes like Sinbad are more like Jack of Jack in the Beanstalk than like Conan.
 
You could - if you want that sort of flavour - get it by starting PCs with relatively low points totals and by making many of the opponents they face powerful enough that a simple sword to the face is not a reasonable approach. This will essentially force them to fall back on their wits - for good or ill.
 
cheers, Mark

Thanks - they estimate about 30,000 people took part in the vigil in Copenhagen with thousands more in other smaller towns and cities.
Everybody hopes we can follow Norway's lead on this (in the way they responded to Breivik) and not let it poison public debate: so far, the political response has been reasonably measured, which is a good sign.
 
cheers, Mark

Thanks - they estimate about 30,000 people took part in the vigil in Copenhagen with thousands more in other smaller towns and cities.
Everybody hopes we can follow Norway's lead on this (in the way they responded to Breivik) and not let it poison public debate: so far, the political response has been reasonably measured, which is a good sign.
 
cheers, Mark

The Russian economy would be floundering even without sanctions. And honestly, not only are the sanctions put in place are a pretty mild response to what appears to be naked aggression by Russia, including the shooting down of a commercial airliner by their puppets, but the sanctions are a response to what appears to be absolutely senseless military adventurism. The US can (and should) take full blame for the cluster**** that is the Arabian peninsula right now. It's the direct result of their own mindless and equally unprofitable (in every sense of the word) military adventurism.
 
But the US being totally in the wrong in 2003 is no reason for other countries to be totally in the wrong in 2013. And not responding to naked in-your-face aggression right on your own doorstep is not really an option. Frankly, I'd rather see the US and the EU try to punish Russian stupidity via sanctions first, than by starting with sending weapons and troops to Ukraine. 
 
I understand that Putin feels threatened by the EU rolling up to his door. But that has less to do with EU "expansionism" than with the former Warsaw Pact countries responding to decades of Russian occupation and oppression with an acute desire to put as much distance between themselves and Russia as possible. Russia's current ravaging of Ukraine is more of the same - Putin has done more to boost the desire of Ukrainians to join the EU than a generation of Eurocrats ever could have managed. Basically, Putin seems to have taken the collapse of the Soviet Union as a blueprint for Russia, not a warning.
 
cheers, Mark

I'm guessing you haven't looked at the case in any detail - nor read what I wrote, from this response.
 
Brown was shot once while allegedly wrestling with the cop - I mentioned that and noted that if true (and it is supported by the autopsy evidence), that was easily justifiable. However, that isn't what killed him - he then fled the scene, apparently lightly injured. The cop pursued him some distance (about a block) and fired another 10 shots (none of them at close range, according to the autopsy), killing him. That - again, if true: it meshes with both physical site and autopsy evidence - does not seem to comply with either the local PD's rules, nor federal law on the use of lethal force, both of which require a suspect to be considered an immediate threat to the community or officer in question. A priori, then, there seems to be grounds for a trial. Now maybe there's more evidence that argued against that - but so far none has been been presented. Maybe he was charging - maybe not. Without a trial, we'll never know .... which is kind of the point, no?
 
All the palaver about "show trials" is just you inventing things you thought I might have said, which you think might sound bad: I'm not in favour of show trials, and have never claimed to be. Nor am I "fixated" on the public order aspect of trials. But that is an important aspect of this case - as the riots so eloquently prove - and it's pure foolishness to ignore that aspect: as the riots also demonstrate. 
 
cheers, Mark

I'm guessing you haven't looked at the case in any detail - nor read what I wrote, from this response.
 
Brown was shot once while allegedly wrestling with the cop - I mentioned that and noted that if true (and it is supported by the autopsy evidence), that was easily justifiable. However, that isn't what killed him - he then fled the scene, apparently lightly injured. The cop pursued him some distance (about a block) and fired another 10 shots (none of them at close range, according to the autopsy), killing him. That - again, if true: it meshes with both physical site and autopsy evidence - does not seem to comply with either the local PD's rules, nor federal law on the use of lethal force, both of which require a suspect to be considered an immediate threat to the community or officer in question. A priori, then, there seems to be grounds for a trial. Now maybe there's more evidence that argued against that - but so far none has been been presented. Maybe he was charging - maybe not. Without a trial, we'll never know .... which is kind of the point, no?
 
All the palaver about "show trials" is just you inventing things you thought I might have said, which you think might sound bad: I'm not in favour of show trials, and have never claimed to be. Nor am I "fixated" on the public order aspect of trials. But that is an important aspect of this case - as the riots so eloquently prove - and it's pure foolishness to ignore that aspect: as the riots also demonstrate. 
 
cheers, Mark

I'm guessing you haven't looked at the case in any detail - nor read what I wrote, from this response.
 
Brown was shot once while allegedly wrestling with the cop - I mentioned that and noted that if true (and it is supported by the autopsy evidence), that was easily justifiable. However, that isn't what killed him - he then fled the scene, apparently lightly injured. The cop pursued him some distance (about a block) and fired another 10 shots (none of them at close range, according to the autopsy), killing him. That - again, if true: it meshes with both physical site and autopsy evidence - does not seem to comply with either the local PD's rules, nor federal law on the use of lethal force, both of which require a suspect to be considered an immediate threat to the community or officer in question. A priori, then, there seems to be grounds for a trial. Now maybe there's more evidence that argued against that - but so far none has been been presented. Maybe he was charging - maybe not. Without a trial, we'll never know .... which is kind of the point, no?
 
All the palaver about "show trials" is just you inventing things you thought I might have said, which you think might sound bad: I'm not in favour of show trials, and have never claimed to be. Nor am I "fixated" on the public order aspect of trials. But that is an important aspect of this case - as the riots so eloquently prove - and it's pure foolishness to ignore that aspect: as the riots also demonstrate. 
 
cheers, Mark

Ashton Carter did write the article in question - he warned that terrorist attacks against the US had been attempted in the past, and that eventually some of them were likely to succeed (well, duh!) He also indicated possible high risk targets: the two towers, the white house, etc. All of which is .... well, common sense actually, and no different from what me and my buddies (and tons of other people) were saying. He did not predict airline hijacks, he didn't predict the date, all he did is point to something that should have been obvious to anyone paying even moderate attention to foreign affairs.
 
He also pointed out that reactionary elements in the US government would use such an attack to push their own security business agenda, which of course also happened ... and which other people had also pointed out was likely in advance. Heck, they're still doing it today, and back in the commie era they did it then. Predicting that outcome doesn't require prescience so much as basic awareness of US politics.
 
As for the site that published the article, they're ... how do I put this delicately? They're raving, drooling bug**** crazy - for example, just sample this delicious article about how Liberals and Jews have nearly toppled the British Conservatives through mass ritual satanic sacrifice ... and then go on to the big reveal - satanic cults are actually the front for an extraterrestrial mind control operation! This is stupidity on such a scale that mere contact with it burns. So seriously, I don't think we need to look for corroborating evidence before dismissing this out of hand.
 
cheers, Mark

I'm guessing you haven't looked at the case in any detail - nor read what I wrote, from this response.
 
Brown was shot once while allegedly wrestling with the cop - I mentioned that and noted that if true (and it is supported by the autopsy evidence), that was easily justifiable. However, that isn't what killed him - he then fled the scene, apparently lightly injured. The cop pursued him some distance (about a block) and fired another 10 shots (none of them at close range, according to the autopsy), killing him. That - again, if true: it meshes with both physical site and autopsy evidence - does not seem to comply with either the local PD's rules, nor federal law on the use of lethal force, both of which require a suspect to be considered an immediate threat to the community or officer in question. A priori, then, there seems to be grounds for a trial. Now maybe there's more evidence that argued against that - but so far none has been been presented. Maybe he was charging - maybe not. Without a trial, we'll never know .... which is kind of the point, no?
 
All the palaver about "show trials" is just you inventing things you thought I might have said, which you think might sound bad: I'm not in favour of show trials, and have never claimed to be. Nor am I "fixated" on the public order aspect of trials. But that is an important aspect of this case - as the riots so eloquently prove - and it's pure foolishness to ignore that aspect: as the riots also demonstrate. 
 
cheers, Mark

I'm guessing you haven't looked at the case in any detail - nor read what I wrote, from this response.
 
Brown was shot once while allegedly wrestling with the cop - I mentioned that and noted that if true (and it is supported by the autopsy evidence), that was easily justifiable. However, that isn't what killed him - he then fled the scene, apparently lightly injured. The cop pursued him some distance (about a block) and fired another 10 shots (none of them at close range, according to the autopsy), killing him. That - again, if true: it meshes with both physical site and autopsy evidence - does not seem to comply with either the local PD's rules, nor federal law on the use of lethal force, both of which require a suspect to be considered an immediate threat to the community or officer in question. A priori, then, there seems to be grounds for a trial. Now maybe there's more evidence that argued against that - but so far none has been been presented. Maybe he was charging - maybe not. Without a trial, we'll never know .... which is kind of the point, no?
 
All the palaver about "show trials" is just you inventing things you thought I might have said, which you think might sound bad: I'm not in favour of show trials, and have never claimed to be. Nor am I "fixated" on the public order aspect of trials. But that is an important aspect of this case - as the riots so eloquently prove - and it's pure foolishness to ignore that aspect: as the riots also demonstrate. 
 
cheers, Mark

If it were the case that prosecutors only proceeded when they knew they could secure a conviction, then every trial that actually proceeded would end in conviction. That's not the case, so we can write that idea off. Trials and pretrials proceed by different rules, and they don't always end the same way. "Certain" convictions sometimes fall apart, and longshot prosecutions sometimes pull through against the odds. How the evidence is presented, what it is, how the witnesses handle cross-examination - all make a difference. There's a reason that testimony at a Grand Jury trip is treated legally as hearsay and is not normally admissible at an actual trial.
 
We'll just have to disagree on whether a trial would have helped defuse the issue: since it didn't happen, we'll never know. It has happened in the past though.
 
As for "that he was desperate to avoid a trial" comment, you'll note that I was referring to the prosecutor, not the cop, who of course would probably not have wanted to go on trial, even if he was truly innocent and assumed that h e was likely to be exonerated. Any trial is going to be stressful. To Badger, I should note that had the case gone to trial the officer would have been suspended on pay and the police department's insurer - not the cop in question - would have been paying legal costs. So stressful, yes, but financially he would probably be better off than he is now.
 
This is more than just technical futzing about: if the citizenry lose faith in the justice system, the consequences are inevitably terrible for everyone. I've lived in places like that, but you can just look across the border at Mexico for an example. And loss of faith seems to always start with "minor" things like this, where broader concerns get lost in local noise. You place emphasis on the fact that Brown was a big guy, does seem to reacted aggressively towards the cop, and isn't a poster boy for unwarranted use of deadly force. Maybe true. But see it from the community end of things: why was Michael Brown stopped in the first place? What heinous crime was he committing? He was initially stopped for ... jaywalking. Even later, when he was recognised as a potential suspect in a nearby robbery - of 3 cigarillos - that's not enough to warrant the use of deadly force, which requires the suspect be an imminent risk to the community or the officer in question. So using a gun in self defence - which arguably was the case when the officer was in his car - is fine. Pursuing the suspect and firing a further 10 shots at him and killing him - that's pretty dubious and not immediately clear that it's in accordance with the law. Here's the autopsy report - http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/heres-dods-report-michael-browns-autopsy and http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/08/13/ferguson-qa/819e10796b809e6135932cdd63a2bb937c390f1f/autopsycrop.jpg.
 
Seen from the community point of view, this is another case of a minor crime escalating into confrontation and death. Police in other countries are specifically instructed - first order of business - to try to avoid escalating things, which is maybe one reason that they kill citizens at 3-5% the rate that US officers do. It's almost certainly a major reason that Ferguson boiled over the way it did: less to do with the actual details of the incident - more to do with the nature of the incident.
 
cheers, Mark
 
Edit: oh, and I *have* tried skydiving: I got my B licence (unsupervised free fall) at university. It's awesome fun and can be highly recommended.

"Know won't go anywhere"? Are you implying a fixed trial? A grand jury is not a trial, and with more time, more evidence, and a different procedure, might yield different results. So, you don't need to be certain of a conviction to proceed. The only thing required is "probable cause" - is there a case to answer? I'll admit I don't know. But experience shows, that if there is any doubt, sending a case to court tends to defuse the situation more often than it exacerbates it - even though that's not always the case: there's no certainty in life. A badly-handled trial *might* be as bad as a badly-handled grand jury - but the lack of a trial emphasises the feeling in the community that justice is not being done. That's the real cause of the trouble in Ferguson. This particular shooting is just a trigger - as you note, maybe not even a very good case - for underlying problems. 
And yes, it would have been hard for the cop in question - but then, so was deciding not to go to trial. He's lost his job and his home, so it's not clear that a trial would have been worse for him. And given the riots after the grand jury decision, it is clear that didn't work too well - an outcome that should have come as a surprise to no-one. So yeah, I think it could have been handled better.
 
Edit: No, actually, stronger than that. Given the pervasive and growing distrust of the police even among ordinary citizens, precisely *because* of the feeling that justice is not being served, I think it was handled really badly. The fact that the usual procedures for a grand jury were significantly altered in this case, indicates that the prosecutor knew what the issues were and fumbled it anyway. He gave the impression - even to me, who tends to give the cops the benefit of the doubt - that he was desperate to avoid a trial. Whether that is true or not, it's impressions and emotions that are fueling this.
 
Cheers, Mark

Actually, sometimes you do. A core concept of the English justice system - on which the US system is built - is that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. The justice system does not exist in isolation from the citizenry, and the prosecutor had the discretion to send this case to trial, if only to ensure justice was seen to be done. He should have done so, I think. After all his job - and the job of the system - is to maintain public order, and it does not look like that is what happened.
 
Our systems give prosecutors a lot of discretion, but the flip side is that we expect them to use it wisely.
 
Regards, Mark

"Know won't go anywhere"? Are you implying a fixed trial? A grand jury is not a trial, and with more time, more evidence, and a different procedure, might yield different results. So, you don't need to be certain of a conviction to proceed. The only thing required is "probable cause" - is there a case to answer? I'll admit I don't know. But experience shows, that if there is any doubt, sending a case to court tends to defuse the situation more often than it exacerbates it - even though that's not always the case: there's no certainty in life. A badly-handled trial *might* be as bad as a badly-handled grand jury - but the lack of a trial emphasises the feeling in the community that justice is not being done. That's the real cause of the trouble in Ferguson. This particular shooting is just a trigger - as you note, maybe not even a very good case - for underlying problems. 
And yes, it would have been hard for the cop in question - but then, so was deciding not to go to trial. He's lost his job and his home, so it's not clear that a trial would have been worse for him. And given the riots after the grand jury decision, it is clear that didn't work too well - an outcome that should have come as a surprise to no-one. So yeah, I think it could have been handled better.
 
Edit: No, actually, stronger than that. Given the pervasive and growing distrust of the police even among ordinary citizens, precisely *because* of the feeling that justice is not being served, I think it was handled really badly. The fact that the usual procedures for a grand jury were significantly altered in this case, indicates that the prosecutor knew what the issues were and fumbled it anyway. He gave the impression - even to me, who tends to give the cops the benefit of the doubt - that he was desperate to avoid a trial. Whether that is true or not, it's impressions and emotions that are fueling this.
 
Cheers, Mark