Field Trip Rationale Examples: Fill & Download for Free

As my train is delayed about an hour, I've decided to take a stab at this very difficult question.I don't tend to gamble, at least not without doing a lot of analytics beforehand. Brexit is difficult to analyse though as the current factors driving the outcome are very idiosyncratic and based on a lot of egoistic drivers. To make it worse, I now don't have access to racks of powerful computers to do even some simple simulations. So please note that this answer is going to be based on subjective experiences of office and client politics and my observations thereof.So, I can say that the outcome is not as predictable as when I was trading Brexit a couple of months ago. That was because the likelihood of Mr Johnson becoming PM then was associated with a disastrous outcome for the UK so it was a series of single-direction trades as Mr Johnson was the sole/primary risk factor at the time. Simples.Now that Mr Johnson is PM, the markets are assessing the likelihood of him actually delivering anything, let alone Brexit. The bunch of amateurs called his cabinet who are making statement after statement of utter nonsense is oddly reassuring in that it conveys the message of incompetence. And such incompetence means that Mr Johnson's capacity to seriously damage the UK is limited.The impression of unity in the cabinet is also oddly possibly a factor which suggests that nothing of note is likely to happen. That's because they are effectively a bunch of schoolchildren on a field trip. Bring them to a factory where real work needs to be done and they'll chip in until they realise they don't know how to drive a fork lift truck without causing an accident or haven't the strength to open the valves or suddenly understand huge powerful machines are actually dangerous. Then they may just prefer to make their excuses and quietly slope out, if they're not found out first. Basically, the whole cabinet are a bunch of egoists promoted way past their tiny abilities. I mean, who in the cabinet would you trust with your pension or look after your health if you're ill? Anyone springs to mind? No? Me neither.Here is an example of staggering incompetence:What do you think about Savid Javid's statement about how the spending after Brexit will be funded?However, all the above does not mean that the UK will not be damaged by Mr Johnson and his cabinet. The point is that the markets seem to think the damage will not be as bad as it may have been due to the overall incompetence of the whole government.So, overall, I suggest the chances of the UK leaving by Halloween are less than 30%. This is based in some part on observations of the current EUR/GBP cross rate. If No Deal Brexit is a certainty, then GBP should be significantly weaker. Saying that, GBP volatility is still running at persistently high levels based on my last observation a couple of weeks ago.Additionally, the whole point of Mr Johnson's government seems to be seeking other people/entities to blame and deflect attention away from their innate incompetence. If that is indeed the driving rationale behind Mr Johnson's government, then any date for Brexit is irrelevant.

(I'm assuming the question refers to FQL.)To be clear, our goal was not to create a new language - quite the contrary, we tried to make this resemble SQL as closely as possible.https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/14 is my original post announcing it. The documentation page linked in that blog post now 404's, but fortunately the record lives on in our revision history. I've copied the relevant section below:RationaleFQL is a way to query the same Facebook data you can access through the other API functions, but with a SQL-style interface. In fact, many of the normal API calls are simple wrappers for FQL queries. All of the usual privacy checks are still applied. A typical query looks something like this:SELECT name, pic FROM user WHERE uid=211031 OR uid=4801660So, with all that said, why would you use FQL? The key advantages of using FQL over our more traditional API methods are as follows:Condensed XML reduces bandwidth and parsing costs. Instead of getting all of the information available about a large set of items, you can get just the fields you want for only the set of items matching a specific condition. You can request the specific set of information by adding constraints to the WHERE clause and only listing certain fields in the SELECT clause.More complex requests can reduce the number of requests necessary. Often the data that you are trying to get depends upon the results of a previous method call. For example, with the traditional API, to get the names of a person's friends, you first call friends.get and then pass the result directly back in to users.getInfo. Now you can just execute one FQL query that uses a subquery to get the set of friends - thus reducing an extra trip back and forth, and all of the latency associated with it.Provides a single consistent, unified interface for all of your data. Instead of having to learn numerous different methods that each have their own idiosyncrasies, you can make all of your requests with one function that has a consistent return type. Additionally, if you do need to call any of the traditional methods, the return XML is very similar, so the switching cost is negligible.It's fun! Check out the examples available at <link long gone> and then try playing around with it in the test console - you can do some cool stuff with it!I guess the footnote on this is that I also just thought it would be fun to write.

With all due respect to many of the other responders, and with all due respect to our armed forces, truthfully I don't think many would.Oh, don't get me wrong, if Donald Trump was outside a domicile with a HVT inside and personally grabbed a Marine and told him "I want you to execute that son of a bitch and I want you to kill every man woman and child you find in there", that Marine would almost certainly tell him where to stick it.But that's not really how it would go, is it?I have two sets of two words for you.The first is disposition matrix.That is what we call the "kill list" - it is a list of individuals who the United States believes it has the legal authority to kill, whether they are on a battlefield or not. The criteria for who goes on that list is not known. The overview process is not known. What burden of proof goes into it is not known. People who are on the list are not charged with a crime, have no ability to appeal, and the government has no obligation to produce any evidence. There is no judicial review, at least in any commonly understood sense of it. It is developed and reviewed by a range of non-military government officials operating under internally developed legal rationale (that is not subject to public knowledge or judicial review, though much of it has been leaked), and then handed over to the Joint Chiefs with the expectation that it be executed. The Joint Chiefs then filter it down the chain of command. At some point, a member of the armed forces is given a target, and they terminate it (usually by drone but not always).There are similar processes regarding torture, indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition, and other what we might charitably call extra-legal measures that, thus far, I am unaware of any member of the military refusing to engage in or execute because of either its questionable legality or moral ambiguity. It is worth noting that, already, in many of those processes and in the disposition matrix itself, family members of suspected terrorists often wind up on the list - they are, after all, by definition associates of a known terrorist. Just as in our detention system from Gitmo to black sites, often times the people that wind up being flagged do so because of fairly specious connections or hearsay allegations - among them being a relative of someone else who trips a red flag. And, again, as it relates to terminating targets, it is not usually a special forces team busting in a door and shooting people, but rather an opaque criteria process that is then handed off and handed down to the people who (often remotely) execute the order (who may or not have any idea what specific criteria was used at all).So while the fantasy here is that a solider would get a patently illegal and immoral order, and be standing in front of a family of crying wives and children with their gun drawn, and have to make that decision, it is almost a dead certainty that that is not how that would play out.Instead of imagining this:Imagine this:Likely, the way that what Trump is talking about would play out is as a collective decision within the executive branch that family members of known terrorists who pose an imminent threat will from then on meet whatever standard is required to get them on the disposition matrix. It may even involve just assigning new weight to that specific criteria (e.g. "we used to treat it as a value-neutral proposition, now we treat it as a potentially dispositive indicator of threat-level"). The President leads that discussion, sets the terms, sets the policy (and culture), and ultimately has (we believe) final review of the people on the list. He will make that decision, he will have people within the bureaucracy give it a stamp of legal approval (memos saying "it is our belief that this is legal" which, again, they don't have to prove or even argue in court), and they will likely make some effort to try to carve out some patently obvious moral sticky wickets (say, targeting and intentionally killing unattended young children). It will hit the chain of command, filter down, and some guy operating a drone somewhere will be told that coordinates X Y and Z contain a HVT (the details of which they might not even know), so they should go ahead and push the button. And, sitting in that chair, on what grounds will the operator have to assume it is an illegal or immoral order? How many people, sitting in that chair, will take off the headset, litigate the entire thing in their head, decide that all those bureaucrats and brass are wrong in their opinion, and stand down because they believe it to be an illegal order?I don't think many would. And I think, in truth, it would very easy for Trump or any president to walk into those secret discussions over the disposition matrix and move the needle however they wish - that whole process was designed, in truth, to allow him to do exactly that. If he comes in with the attitude that we should start treating family members of terrorists as potential terrorists themselves, that a tactical objective is achieved by broadening the scope of imminent threat to include potentially radicalized other actors surrounding the original terrorist target, who in the chain of command pushes back? The Joint Chiefs? The DOJ? The Pentagon? The Commander in the field? The drone operator? And, even if they did, how effective would that pushback be, working upstream as it would be against an entire system and culture designed to allow qualitative and subjective criteria not subject to legal review, approval, or case by case evidentiary standards, to form a decision-making matrix then handed off to the people executing the wet work?It is very important to understand, when discussing these kinds of questions, that the fantasy that pops into mind when we hear it - crying family standing in front of a Marine with a gun - is just not how that would go. Instead, it will be perfectly moral individuals operating in good faith carrying out a task with incomplete information, muddied legality (which they frankly wouldn't feel they were in a position to weigh in on), extreme institutional pressure, and a nearly perfect track record of precedence for precisely zero implications from carrying out heretofore illegal orders if it's something that the entire chain of command up to the President believe in.Relatedly, by the time this theoretical order works its way through the process I just described, IS it even illegal? Look to torture as an example. The process begins with a will to torture terror suspects, which by most people's estimations would have been considered pretty patently illegal in the past. But by the time the process is complete who the hell even knows anymore? We had a president and a political leadership that came in and just kind of by fiat declared that torture under certain conditions (which they define for themselves) is kind of legal now and definitely pretty moral! They didn't win a court case or pass a new law to make that true, they just kind of said it out loud enough times with enough confidence. So, the armed forces and the civilian agencies operated under that assumption and carried out those orders - and nobody who did so was ever prosecuted or even faced any serious consequence. And then, after the fact, you see that that internal legal rationale has become mainstream and partisan - not a moral bright line but just another political argument - and precisely nobody who relied on it was ever prosecuted or even charged anymore, and, huh, I guess it kind of just BECAME legal. Obama came in and just sort of said we aren't going to do that any more, but no law has been changed, no new law passed, no consequences meted out or created. So torture in this country is now, still, just...kind of legal.Detaining American citizens indefinitely without charge. Killing American citizens not on a battlefield abroad with no judicial review. Negating due process for individuals based on secret criteria and with no review or appeal. Collecting private phone records of individual citizens. The aforementioned engaging in interrogation tactics that even WE have declared illegal in the past. Extraordinary rendition. Building and operating secret prisons to grab people we decided we were at war with (without declaring war) and then holding them but in conditions which we declare do not have to follow guidelines given to prisoners of war (because we never declared war, you see). Conducting military operations under the banner of the Red Cross or community health workers. The list goes on and on and on. The armed forces, today, routinely engages in things that I consider illegal and that almost anybody would have twenty years ago. At the beginning of the process (you know, when it's just a floated hypothetical like this one), I am sure that many, many people would have said "oh absolutely not - I would absolutely refuse that patently illegal order." But by the time the order gets to them, filtered through the executive process, applied to the already murky Global War on Terror, and once it has been deflated from a clear-cut case of morality and legality to being a muddy case of partisan politics, not only will almost none refuse the order, almost none would believe it to be illegal or refuseable.My point is that we're thinking of this the wrong way. Trump's order would likely not be interpreted to mean that we can now kill innocent people. Rather, it would be interpreted to mean that the close family members of radicalized terrorists are no longer to be considered innocent. The criteria used to determine that, what burden of proof the armed forces might use to deem someone worthy of inclusion on our kill list, how internally reviewable that decision is - totally up to President Trump. The whole system is designed to make that true - and to make that decision opaque and unappealable to anyone outside that chain of command.The old Nixonian chestnut, "when the president does it, that means it is not illegal", really is very much true in this day and age as it relates to the country's executive and their tactical decisions in the war on terror. It is, in many ways, the operating principle behind everything. This was certainly true under Bush, it has still been true under Obama, and you damn sure better believe it will be truer than ever in a country in which Donald Trump has been elected president.The second set of two words, already nailed by Rohan Sood, is behavioral obedience. He is absolutely right that we always ought to be careful when making assumptions about how we or "reasonable people" might react in situations where institutional and interpersonal pressure plays an enormous role. We all like to envision ourselves as standing up for what's right and having clear, objective moral compasses, but the truth of it is most people do not. Quick, how many people think Edward Snowden is broadly right in his opinion of the at-the-time illegality of NSA surveillance practices? Okay, now how many "Edward Snowdens" have we found, out of the tens of thousands of people tasked with executing those illegalities? When we heard about torture for the first time, think that was from internal whistleblowers? Think again. People who go against massive institutional pressure, buck expectation and peer pressure, and draw a bright moral line they're not willing to cross, are actually exceedingly rare.But we need not go back to the Milgram experiment. Look at something like Abu Ghraib. I know the common interpretation of the situation was it was just a few rowdy guards - "frat boy antics" - but in fact this was a military-run installation wherein dozens of people directly engaged in the abuse, and likely hundreds more were aware. Also a situation where the morality and legality of the actions being performed could not even be reasonably defended - there basically could be absolutely no question that what was going on was wildly immoral and illegal. And yet...The truth is that culture and yes, peer influence and institutional pressure are powerful, powerful motivators - and along with "follow orders," those also happen to be dominant aspects of our armed forces (usually, to good ends, I need to add). Do not misunderstand, I have an enormous respect for our military and individual soldiers. That's not the point here. The point here is, often, when we play the tape on these things in our heads we fantasize about a situation largely absent those pressures. Whereas, in the moment, those are the main operating considerations.You automatically have a self-selected group to begin with when you're talking about the armed forces (generally, people who absolutely conscientiously object to participating in ANY actions that might lead to the deaths of innocent people do not choose military careers). You then have a system wherein obedience is held in incredibly high value, where it is absolutely baked into the culture, where respecting the chain of command and obeying orders even if you might have an incomplete picture yourself are highly, highly cultivated tendencies. You will, on top of that, be a part of an organization and surrounded by peers who will operate tirelessly to convince themselves and you of the rightness of the objective and the unimpeachable nature of the orders being handed down. That will happen in a larger culture that will almost certainly work very swiftly to normalize the moral thinking and legal rational. All of these things will happen WELL in advance of you being put in that position to follow that order.That's an important point in and of itself. Trump's notion might seem patently ridiculous now - but will it, given time? You will not be dropped straight in from March 9th, 2016 any more than soldiers taking certain actions in the Global War on Terror were sky-lifted in from August 2001, looked around and thought "wait, what the holy s$#t?! What the F did you say we're doing now?" By the time that order comes around - an order which will already be glossed up, chewed over, digested, and normalized - you will have already been seasoned, brined, infused and conditioned.I have to add that there are, of course, limits to this - of course. But before you say you're sure of what those limits are, take a step back and consider. Perhaps there are a lot of things that you would have once been sure would have overstepped those limits, but which you view differently now. Perhaps you have moral bright lines that might, in fact, be a little more malleable than you would be inclined or like to believe.So to the question of who in the armed forces would refuse an order from President Trump to kill families of terrorists, I sincerely believe the answer is not many. Oh, in the fantasy that immediately pops into our brains when we first heard the proposition, almost all! But the frightening thing about this question (and, frankly, the comment we're talking about and the man who made it), is that the fantasy would not be how this plays out. We would not be given the luxury of that obvious of a moral calculation. It would almost certainly not seem as clear-cut then as it does now. That is the truly terrifying thing about all this. This process - both the disposition matrix and the general mechanistic ways these sorts of orders get filtered and normalized in the present context of the executive branch and Global War on Terror, as well as the power of culture and behavioral obedience - is a process we misjudge or underestimate at our peril.Would you kill a terrorist's family because Donald Trump told you to? Absolutely not! Who the F would?If, on the other hand, you are a professional soldier desiring to win the war on terror, and your chain of command and the soldiers around you are on a mission to terminate some known terrorist associates and HVTs who we all now understand may include the family members of a terrorist but who POTUS and the Joint Chiefs say pose an imminent threat?Well...