There WERE no microcomputers when _I_ took Chemistry!
Seriously though, Chemistry as you no doubt know, is all about being able to visualize. It's all about understanding these atoms and molecules flying around in comparative vacuums, being able to imagine their shapes and how this affects their interaction with each other and other substances, and being able to imagine the charges distributed across these shapes. I myself had no trouble "getting it" and being able to "see it". However any program that helps to demonstrate these concepts would probably be worthwhile. Certainly even power point slides in color and pseudo "3D" would be better than trying to figure out the tetrahedron the teacher was trying to make in chalk on a blackboard.
However you must remember that Chemistry inevitably involves a lot of math - albeit simple math. And teenagers are some of the laziest creatures in the world. Therefore no matter how you sugar coat it, you will always get students dragging their feet because they're not prepared to do the actual work. There's only one way to get good at math, and that's practice practice practice! No computer program can fix that.
The best ideas are the one you have yourself. These are the ones you remember. These are the ones that charge you enough emotionally that you're willing to act on them.
No one likes being manipulated into a system, into a different way of doing things. If you try to "impose" an "open, community environment" it will most likely backfire. However if you approach the people you want to include, present the problem to them and LISTEN to their suggestions, you're likely to get better results. Don't think of "one ideal method" for everyone because people are different - culturally, socially and in terms of personality. Some people respond to some things, and others need other things. Remember that when you're dealing with populations and biological systems (like human beings), you are always dealing with the normal, bell or Gauss curve. There will be the anti-socials on one side who will never get involved no matter how hard you try (but they're probably damned good at their job, which is why they're there). There will be the extroverts on the other end, who are great at socializing and networking and becoming the boss' pet and when you sit back and actually analyze the quality of the work they do, hmm, well... but they're such good friends and they probably already have some sort of "community" going.
Then there's everyone else somewhere along the middle.
Don't kid yourself into thinking you are going to change human nature. There will always be friction. There will always be office politics. There will always be resentment and jealousy. That is called humanity. However you will learn the needs of the people you are trying to help by listening to them, not by dreaming up some "method" on your own that you will force them to adopt.
There's a lot the Drake Equation fails to account for.
Oh I agree it's certainly not a "formula" in the true sense of the word. It's more like a thought experiment or an exercise in philosophy. It makes a lot of sense in what it tries to demonstrate, but it's certainly not something you can build upon. I was just making a point - if the xenos we're looking for don't want to be found, it's going to be a lot harder to find them than just pointing a telescope at the sky and listening. Certainly I don't think the Drake equation is a scientific law - just a logical "sounding" hypothesis that we will never be able to fully test or prove.
I think either you mean flourescent, or I wasn't paying attention in grade school.
Alternating current? The current flows one way in the wire, then the other way. At some point the flow has to be zero to get from one direction to another. When there's no current, your light bulb is technically "off" (not really because the filament is still hot and glowing). The FREQUENCY of the alternating current is 60 Hertz in North America. That means that your lightbulb is switching on and off 60 times per second. Of course due to the residual heat in the filament, it would be more fair to say that the incandescent light bulb is "pulsating" at 60Hz between a maximum and minimum brightness. The nature of fluorescent lights makes this "flicker" even more noticeable, since it's not a bit of hot wire providing light but the actual current moving through a gas.
You must now exchange your nerd card for this pink "probationary nerd" card.
I hear that amazing iPad has a near-perpetual 10 hour battery too!
I heard you only have to recharge it every 28 days or so, for 3 to 5 days and it gets bitchy as hell just before so that's when you know you have to plug it in...
when Tilley told his shareholders in May of 2002 that GE had offered $2 billion 'sight unseen' to buy out the technology.
The man was clearly a visionary. After all, the US government has handed out billions of dollars to SOME companies (cough GM, AIG, Citi, Fannie and Freddie) "sight unseen"... so it DOES happen!
I'm wondering what frequency this will oscillate at and if this will potentially effect people proned to seizures ?
I don't think they would be so silly as to use a visible part of the spectrum. Rather I expect them to use the same frequencies used by say the remote control for your television. If it's invisible, it won't cause seizures because, well, it's invisible - the brain will not detect it. I have yet to read about television remote control induced seizures. Also if you're transmitting data, the "pulses" will be far too fast for you to notice even if it WAS visible light. Heck you can't even see your regular incandescent bulb turning on and off at 50/60Hz (depending which continent you live on). Now imagine the gigahertz range...
Of course if there are people willing to claim that radio wi-fi causes all sorts of "allergies", I'm sure there will be even more crackpots faking seizures (but somehow never wetting themselves) to prove how terrible THIS technology is. Luddites are everywhere...
Do we WANT to be detected? Oh it would be wonderful if we could communicate with intelligent life somewhere other than earth (I am assuming there is intelligence here). But what if the species we contact are not peaceful? What if they're out looking for worlds to enslave? There certainly would be an advantage in staying quiet and being the first to "discover" a new civilization without giving up our own presence. That way we could study these new beings before deciding whether to risk contact or not.
Likewise, the same logic can be applied to an alien species. Why would they trust us? Why would they carelessly beam their presence out into space, not knowing who was going to listen in? It is certain, given our past history (you know, that part about strong humans usually ending up wiping out weaker ones through conquest), that we ourselves aren't exactly trust-worthy. Maybe they have heard us, and we failed the test, and we will never meet our neighbors. That is one possibility the "Drake Equation" fails to account for. Maybe we will be permanently assigned to the universe's "time out" box, because of our bad behavior - and we'll never know.
This means that laying it flat on a table for board games is pretty much impossible.
Unless of course you buy the $5900 iPad Gaming Table (tm), available in chipboard covered in black laminate and with a precisely engineered depression to fir your iPad in the middle of the table. Optional power supply only $250!
Great, along with lithium's side effect of "decreased sperm motility", you can cue the conspiracy theorists
You realize that for a start, lithium is a naturally occurring trace element, right? Now as far as I know, I haven't heard of a great deal of sterility in Argentina or China or Australia, where the world's largest lithium concentrations are found. Certainly there are no weird mutants to be seen - well, no weirder than anywhere else.
Now considering the limited supply (it is after all a TRACE element), the fact that concentrated lithium deposits aren't extremely harmful to life, and now spread a little bit all around the world - what will happen? Nothing.
Yes, metallic lithium is very reactive. Yes, batteries containing lithium have been known to short out and catch fire or explode. This was usually due to manufacturing defects in the batteries. However lithium's extreme reactivity is a plus, not a negative. This isn't something that's going to hang around in the environment in a reactive state for long. The minute it's out, it reacts and turns into something far less harmless. Preventing all of it from reacting at once is something that can be engineered. And because lithium is so scarce, when you start mass producing large quantities of batteries, you are going to want those batteries back to chemically reduce the lithium and recycle it. After all at one point this becomes cheaper than mining it afresh.
Anyone get the feeling that airborne lithium will soon be a pollution concern?
Not really. Lithium is so reactive, you won't find any "airborne lithium". Only lithium oxide. Which will react with the water vapor in the air to produce lithium hydroxide. Which will react with CO2 to produce lithium carbonate which, like most carbonates, is not very soluble. Most of it will precipitate out of solution, and the rest will make us feel less depressed.
The more annoying the copy protection, the faster it gets hacked. Now I'm not going to start the whole "piracy" argument (I am sure it has begun already). I will merely state that even owners of legitimate copies will be downloading the "crack" to remove this feature.
I can't see any possible way how this would boost sales, however. Before you used to have to look very hard to find these things. Today everyone knows where to get the cracks (and the whole program) instantly (ok so it takes a while to download 7GB). In fact the single biggest factor affecting sales will probably be whether the pirates only distribute the crack bundled with the program only, or stand alone.
I won't be arrested. I am over halfway through my life and I haven't been arrested, because I don't break the law. What makes you think I will be arrested?
Or your children?
I won't be happy about it, but I've taught them right from wrong. What they do with their lives is their own problem.
Or your significant other?
Same as me - she's my age and hasn't ever been arrested. Why do you think suddenly she will be?
What if you get arrested but you're innocent, yet they don't figure that out for a while?
Ahhh finally the whole meat of the bleeding heart argument. How about I take the opposite position? Let's turn loose every single murderer in prison because one of them might be innocent.
Honestly, I would take my chances with a "less than perfect" justice system that offers greater deterrence rather than have career criminals laughing at the current system, and revolving door prisons. And, as Terry Pratchett once said, the death penalty combines the maximum deterrence with the minimum chance of recurrence.
Well that's the dumbed down version. For a real explanation of anti social personality disorder I invite you to read the DSM-IV definition.
Basically someone with anti-social personality disorder is interested only in their own personal gratification. Everyone and everything else in the world is just an object to be used and/or manipulated in order to satisfy their whims. They have no conscience and no remorse. They are aware of the consequences of their actions, and just don't give a damn. That's a little more specific than "that ass hole who cut you off in traffic".
Every time I point out how China will replace the US as the dominant force in the world, I get modded troll. Well, America, I understand. My mother is British, and consequently I have a British passport. I understand the denial that's happening - the way you feel is just like the British felt from the mid 1800's up until the middle of last century. The decline of the British Empire took 100 years. But nowadays things happen a lot faster.
Let's look at China:
They have all the industry they need - so much, that they are rapidly becoming the worlds biggest exporter of everything.
They have a huge population.
They have a strong leadership.
They have a real military. Uh this isn't Iraq, right? Their submarines are good enough to sneak up on US carriers, and they have demonstrated that they can shoot down satellites. Now I ask myself where the US will be with carriers on the bottom of the oceans and no satellites to coordinate communications for combined arms or provide overhead intelligence. They've chosen a very smart, asymmetric warfare route. They don't need to have ultra high tech main battle tanks capable of taking direct hits from M1's. They don't need hundred million dollar stealth aircraft. They just need lots and lots of reasonably good anti aircraft and anti tank missiles.
They are becoming scientific leaders, which will even take away the US technology edge.
They have a space program. They also have nuclear weapons. Combine the two and that means they can put a nuclear bomb anywhere on the planet with an ICBM. What's not known is their accuracy, but who needs accuracy if you have a multi-megaton device?
Everything they can't innovate (yet), they can copy. Adherence to patents and intellectual property laws is only given by consent.
They are the single largest holder of US debt, outside the US government.
Ohhhh, it's going to be ugly. I certainly wouldn't want to live in Taiwan in the next 20 years, for a start. Forget the argument that the US is China's biggest customer, that's irrelevant. Wars often start between the best trading partners. The US and the UK circa 1800. The US and Japan WW2. France and Prussia/Germany, quite often in the 19th century. The only hope I have is that China has not shown any expansionist tendencies in recent history. They've been content with defending their borders. But if suddenly they decide to play the imperialism game - watch out!
little side tangent, if you suffer from some mental disorder which makes you dangerous to others is it's societies duty to punish you for being sick or to try to cure you?
I think that was the whole point the people who wrote the human rights bills and prison reform laws were trying to get across. However it fails to account for the fact that 1) Is it the fault of the person you killed that you are "sick"; 2) Is it the fault of the next person you are going to kill that you are still "sick" and 3) anti social personality disorder is one of the least treatable mental illnesses with a very low chance of a "cure". Their world view is so distorted that it is unlikely they are willing to accept help. Some people actually do just want to watch the world burn.
Actually most people in prison are there for drug crimes.
I was under the understanding that most people in prison were completely innocent.
You can look up the statistics for yourself, yes? That's the joy of the internet era and things like google. 70 to 80 percent of prison populations have anti social personality disorder. That's an establishedfact. Now you can argue all you want, but it won't change the facts, yes?
I doubt that is the case. Unless you believe that a very large percentage of Americans have personality disorders and don't qualify as humans.
You present a non sequitur. First of all, that's not what I said. Only around 3% of the general population have anti social personality disorder. Secondly I made no comparison to other countries. However Up to 80% of prison populations have this disorder (the cited article says 75%, in med school I learned 80%). This is logical since the people who commit the crimes are more likely to be caught and sent to prison, so you will end up with a concentrating effect of the disorder in the prison population. No one said "American", and I don't have comparative data for other countries around the world. However it would be reasonable to assume that there's nothing special about "Americans" in particular, and similar statistics must exist in other countries.
If you wanted to create a well-adjusted person would you lock your child up with a bunch of murderers, arsonists and rapists as the only humans to interact with?
I do not think that the current model is the best model. As a preventive and deterrent system, it is clearly broken. As for rehabilitation, well, that's a joke too. Frankly my own views are rather extreme, and will never be implemented, and are certainly a violation of human rights. But we were talking about the actual world we live in.
The problem is that putting people in prison for rehabilitation is the worst plan since Abe Lincoln said to his wife: "I'm sick of sitting around the house, let's catch a play."
Agreed. But you just can't hang them in public anymore.
Being in prison is not just about removing a dangerous element from society, it is about taking someone's freedom as a punishment.
Actually prison as "punishment" is now a violation of human rights. Prisons are supposed to be entirely for the purposes of "rehabilitation".
Of course the people who wrote the human rights have no understanding that most of the people in prison have serious anti social personality disorders, probably can't be "rehabilitated", and probably don't qualify as "human" in the first place. But that's another story.
Slashdot Mirror
There WERE no microcomputers when _I_ took Chemistry!
Seriously though, Chemistry as you no doubt know, is all about being able to visualize. It's all about understanding these atoms and molecules flying around in comparative vacuums, being able to imagine their shapes and how this affects their interaction with each other and other substances, and being able to imagine the charges distributed across these shapes. I myself had no trouble "getting it" and being able to "see it". However any program that helps to demonstrate these concepts would probably be worthwhile. Certainly even power point slides in color and pseudo "3D" would be better than trying to figure out the tetrahedron the teacher was trying to make in chalk on a blackboard.
However you must remember that Chemistry inevitably involves a lot of math - albeit simple math. And teenagers are some of the laziest creatures in the world. Therefore no matter how you sugar coat it, you will always get students dragging their feet because they're not prepared to do the actual work. There's only one way to get good at math, and that's practice practice practice! No computer program can fix that.
The best ideas are the one you have yourself. These are the ones you remember. These are the ones that charge you enough emotionally that you're willing to act on them.
No one likes being manipulated into a system, into a different way of doing things. If you try to "impose" an "open, community environment" it will most likely backfire. However if you approach the people you want to include, present the problem to them and LISTEN to their suggestions, you're likely to get better results. Don't think of "one ideal method" for everyone because people are different - culturally, socially and in terms of personality. Some people respond to some things, and others need other things. Remember that when you're dealing with populations and biological systems (like human beings), you are always dealing with the normal, bell or Gauss curve. There will be the anti-socials on one side who will never get involved no matter how hard you try (but they're probably damned good at their job, which is why they're there). There will be the extroverts on the other end, who are great at socializing and networking and becoming the boss' pet and when you sit back and actually analyze the quality of the work they do, hmm, well... but they're such good friends and they probably already have some sort of "community" going.
Then there's everyone else somewhere along the middle.
Don't kid yourself into thinking you are going to change human nature. There will always be friction. There will always be office politics. There will always be resentment and jealousy. That is called humanity. However you will learn the needs of the people you are trying to help by listening to them, not by dreaming up some "method" on your own that you will force them to adopt.
There's a lot the Drake Equation fails to account for.
Oh I agree it's certainly not a "formula" in the true sense of the word. It's more like a thought experiment or an exercise in philosophy. It makes a lot of sense in what it tries to demonstrate, but it's certainly not something you can build upon. I was just making a point - if the xenos we're looking for don't want to be found, it's going to be a lot harder to find them than just pointing a telescope at the sky and listening. Certainly I don't think the Drake equation is a scientific law - just a logical "sounding" hypothesis that we will never be able to fully test or prove.
I think either you mean flourescent, or I wasn't paying attention in grade school.
Alternating current? The current flows one way in the wire, then the other way. At some point the flow has to be zero to get from one direction to another. When there's no current, your light bulb is technically "off" (not really because the filament is still hot and glowing). The FREQUENCY of the alternating current is 60 Hertz in North America. That means that your lightbulb is switching on and off 60 times per second. Of course due to the residual heat in the filament, it would be more fair to say that the incandescent light bulb is "pulsating" at 60Hz between a maximum and minimum brightness. The nature of fluorescent lights makes this "flicker" even more noticeable, since it's not a bit of hot wire providing light but the actual current moving through a gas.
You must now exchange your nerd card for this pink "probationary nerd" card.
I hear that amazing iPad has a near-perpetual 10 hour battery too!
I heard you only have to recharge it every 28 days or so, for 3 to 5 days and it gets bitchy as hell just before so that's when you know you have to plug it in...
when Tilley told his shareholders in May of 2002 that GE had offered $2 billion 'sight unseen' to buy out the technology.
The man was clearly a visionary. After all, the US government has handed out billions of dollars to SOME companies (cough GM, AIG, Citi, Fannie and Freddie) "sight unseen"... so it DOES happen!
I'm wondering what frequency this will oscillate at and if this will potentially effect people proned to seizures ?
I don't think they would be so silly as to use a visible part of the spectrum. Rather I expect them to use the same frequencies used by say the remote control for your television. If it's invisible, it won't cause seizures because, well, it's invisible - the brain will not detect it. I have yet to read about television remote control induced seizures. Also if you're transmitting data, the "pulses" will be far too fast for you to notice even if it WAS visible light. Heck you can't even see your regular incandescent bulb turning on and off at 50/60Hz (depending which continent you live on). Now imagine the gigahertz range...
Of course if there are people willing to claim that radio wi-fi causes all sorts of "allergies", I'm sure there will be even more crackpots faking seizures (but somehow never wetting themselves) to prove how terrible THIS technology is. Luddites are everywhere...
Do we WANT to be detected? Oh it would be wonderful if we could communicate with intelligent life somewhere other than earth (I am assuming there is intelligence here). But what if the species we contact are not peaceful? What if they're out looking for worlds to enslave? There certainly would be an advantage in staying quiet and being the first to "discover" a new civilization without giving up our own presence. That way we could study these new beings before deciding whether to risk contact or not.
Likewise, the same logic can be applied to an alien species. Why would they trust us? Why would they carelessly beam their presence out into space, not knowing who was going to listen in? It is certain, given our past history (you know, that part about strong humans usually ending up wiping out weaker ones through conquest), that we ourselves aren't exactly trust-worthy. Maybe they have heard us, and we failed the test, and we will never meet our neighbors. That is one possibility the "Drake Equation" fails to account for. Maybe we will be permanently assigned to the universe's "time out" box, because of our bad behavior - and we'll never know.
This means that laying it flat on a table for board games is pretty much impossible.
Unless of course you buy the $5900 iPad Gaming Table (tm), available in chipboard covered in black laminate and with a precisely engineered depression to fir your iPad in the middle of the table. Optional power supply only $250!
Great, along with lithium's side effect of "decreased sperm motility", you can cue the conspiracy theorists
You realize that for a start, lithium is a naturally occurring trace element, right? Now as far as I know, I haven't heard of a great deal of sterility in Argentina or China or Australia, where the world's largest lithium concentrations are found. Certainly there are no weird mutants to be seen - well, no weirder than anywhere else.
Now considering the limited supply (it is after all a TRACE element), the fact that concentrated lithium deposits aren't extremely harmful to life, and now spread a little bit all around the world - what will happen? Nothing.
Yes, metallic lithium is very reactive. Yes, batteries containing lithium have been known to short out and catch fire or explode. This was usually due to manufacturing defects in the batteries. However lithium's extreme reactivity is a plus, not a negative. This isn't something that's going to hang around in the environment in a reactive state for long. The minute it's out, it reacts and turns into something far less harmless. Preventing all of it from reacting at once is something that can be engineered. And because lithium is so scarce, when you start mass producing large quantities of batteries, you are going to want those batteries back to chemically reduce the lithium and recycle it. After all at one point this becomes cheaper than mining it afresh.
Anyone get the feeling that airborne lithium will soon be a pollution concern?
Not really. Lithium is so reactive, you won't find any "airborne lithium". Only lithium oxide. Which will react with the water vapor in the air to produce lithium hydroxide. Which will react with CO2 to produce lithium carbonate which, like most carbonates, is not very soluble. Most of it will precipitate out of solution, and the rest will make us feel less depressed.
And I have invented a method for telling if someone is a criminal by taking various measurements of their head! I think I will call this "phrenology".
The more annoying the copy protection, the faster it gets hacked. Now I'm not going to start the whole "piracy" argument (I am sure it has begun already). I will merely state that even owners of legitimate copies will be downloading the "crack" to remove this feature.
I can't see any possible way how this would boost sales, however. Before you used to have to look very hard to find these things. Today everyone knows where to get the cracks (and the whole program) instantly (ok so it takes a while to download 7GB). In fact the single biggest factor affecting sales will probably be whether the pirates only distribute the crack bundled with the program only, or stand alone.
What do you do if you get arrested?
I won't be arrested. I am over halfway through my life and I haven't been arrested, because I don't break the law. What makes you think I will be arrested?
Or your children?
I won't be happy about it, but I've taught them right from wrong. What they do with their lives is their own problem.
Or your significant other?
Same as me - she's my age and hasn't ever been arrested. Why do you think suddenly she will be?
What if you get arrested but you're innocent, yet they don't figure that out for a while?
Ahhh finally the whole meat of the bleeding heart argument. How about I take the opposite position? Let's turn loose every single murderer in prison because one of them might be innocent.
Honestly, I would take my chances with a "less than perfect" justice system that offers greater deterrence rather than have career criminals laughing at the current system, and revolving door prisons. And, as Terry Pratchett once said, the death penalty combines the maximum deterrence with the minimum chance of recurrence.
Well that's the dumbed down version. For a real explanation of anti social personality disorder I invite you to read the DSM-IV definition.
Basically someone with anti-social personality disorder is interested only in their own personal gratification. Everyone and everything else in the world is just an object to be used and/or manipulated in order to satisfy their whims. They have no conscience and no remorse. They are aware of the consequences of their actions, and just don't give a damn. That's a little more specific than "that ass hole who cut you off in traffic".
Well that's the joy of redaction, isn't it? You could probably have gone further and turned it into:
[...] most [...] people [...] don't qualify as "human" in the first place.
Fortunately for you, I have no political ambitions... :)
Every time I point out how China will replace the US as the dominant force in the world, I get modded troll. Well, America, I understand. My mother is British, and consequently I have a British passport. I understand the denial that's happening - the way you feel is just like the British felt from the mid 1800's up until the middle of last century. The decline of the British Empire took 100 years. But nowadays things happen a lot faster.
Let's look at China:
They have all the industry they need - so much, that they are rapidly becoming the worlds biggest exporter of everything.
They have a huge population.
They have a strong leadership.
They have a real military. Uh this isn't Iraq, right? Their submarines are good enough to sneak up on US carriers, and they have demonstrated that they can shoot down satellites. Now I ask myself where the US will be with carriers on the bottom of the oceans and no satellites to coordinate communications for combined arms or provide overhead intelligence. They've chosen a very smart, asymmetric warfare route. They don't need to have ultra high tech main battle tanks capable of taking direct hits from M1's. They don't need hundred million dollar stealth aircraft. They just need lots and lots of reasonably good anti aircraft and anti tank missiles.
They are becoming scientific leaders, which will even take away the US technology edge.
They have a space program. They also have nuclear weapons. Combine the two and that means they can put a nuclear bomb anywhere on the planet with an ICBM. What's not known is their accuracy, but who needs accuracy if you have a multi-megaton device?
Everything they can't innovate (yet), they can copy. Adherence to patents and intellectual property laws is only given by consent.
They are the single largest holder of US debt, outside the US government.
Ohhhh, it's going to be ugly. I certainly wouldn't want to live in Taiwan in the next 20 years, for a start. Forget the argument that the US is China's biggest customer, that's irrelevant. Wars often start between the best trading partners. The US and the UK circa 1800. The US and Japan WW2. France and Prussia/Germany, quite often in the 19th century. The only hope I have is that China has not shown any expansionist tendencies in recent history. They've been content with defending their borders. But if suddenly they decide to play the imperialism game - watch out!
little side tangent, if you suffer from some mental disorder which makes you dangerous to others is it's societies duty to punish you for being sick or to try to cure you?
I think that was the whole point the people who wrote the human rights bills and prison reform laws were trying to get across. However it fails to account for the fact that 1) Is it the fault of the person you killed that you are "sick"; 2) Is it the fault of the next person you are going to kill that you are still "sick" and 3) anti social personality disorder is one of the least treatable mental illnesses with a very low chance of a "cure". Their world view is so distorted that it is unlikely they are willing to accept help. Some people actually do just want to watch the world burn.
Actually most people in prison are there for drug crimes.
I was under the understanding that most people in prison were completely innocent.
You can look up the statistics for yourself, yes? That's the joy of the internet era and things like google. 70 to 80 percent of prison populations have anti social personality disorder. That's an established fact. Now you can argue all you want, but it won't change the facts, yes?
I doubt that is the case. Unless you believe that a very large percentage of Americans have personality disorders and don't qualify as humans.
You present a non sequitur. First of all, that's not what I said. Only around 3% of the general population have anti social personality disorder. Secondly I made no comparison to other countries. However Up to 80% of prison populations have this disorder (the cited article says 75%, in med school I learned 80%). This is logical since the people who commit the crimes are more likely to be caught and sent to prison, so you will end up with a concentrating effect of the disorder in the prison population. No one said "American", and I don't have comparative data for other countries around the world. However it would be reasonable to assume that there's nothing special about "Americans" in particular, and similar statistics must exist in other countries.
If you wanted to create a well-adjusted person would you lock your child up with a bunch of murderers, arsonists and rapists as the only humans to interact with?
I do not think that the current model is the best model. As a preventive and deterrent system, it is clearly broken. As for rehabilitation, well, that's a joke too. Frankly my own views are rather extreme, and will never be implemented, and are certainly a violation of human rights. But we were talking about the actual world we live in.
The problem is that putting people in prison for rehabilitation is the worst plan since Abe Lincoln said to his wife: "I'm sick of sitting around the house, let's catch a play."
Agreed. But you just can't hang them in public anymore.
Being in prison is not just about removing a dangerous element from society, it is about taking someone's freedom as a punishment.
Actually prison as "punishment" is now a violation of human rights. Prisons are supposed to be entirely for the purposes of "rehabilitation".
Of course the people who wrote the human rights have no understanding that most of the people in prison have serious anti social personality disorders, probably can't be "rehabilitated", and probably don't qualify as "human" in the first place. But that's another story.
Unplugging the ethernet cable DOESN'T COUNT.
I'm using my neighbor's WiFi you insensitive clod!
what percentage of any settlement will the actual injured party, Stephanie Lenz, receive?
She will receive a coupon good for 10% off her next purchase of any Prince music from Universal...
And the girls will still cry...
They'll never take my 127.0.0.1 away from me, dammit!