Just to clarify, there is no "gene for... Downs Syndrome". Down syndrome is caused by a partial or complete extra (i.e., third) copy of chromosome 21. Thus, it is caused by a failure of meiosis during gamete development, not by a particular allele of any one gene or group of genes.
Not to mention that some rats, like the Norway rat, have become synanthropic and managed to colonize much of the world. The same is true for numerous insect species.
For some time now, it has not been clear to me whether your comments were sincere, honest attempts at meaningful dialogue, or if you were merely trying to incite anger or frustration. I assumed the former and tried to take you as seriously as I could until my patience has finally run out. Judging from some of your exchanges with other slashdotters, I seem to have hung in there a lot longer than most.
In any case, you consistently use the tactic of filling your posts with a variety of common logical fallacies. The effect is that you force your opponents to have to expend effort trying to keep a discussion on topic, defend themselves from straw man attacks, restate points made earlier, and so on. It appears that other slashdotters often either become hostile and angry, which makes them easy for you to attack, or they simply get exhausted with spinning their wheels and give up.
I am well aware that this might all be deliberate on your part, and you are merely trying to bait people into getting upset or angry. In the interest of giving you the benefit of the doubt, though, I will take a detailed look at several of your recent posts so you can see exactly what I'm talking about.
First, we have this comment, in which you make the following logical fallacies, among others.
Moving the goalposts:
If you executed anyone that would get a sentence of 30 years or more... would that not be as likely to deter people as simple imprisonment? You wouldn't claim that people would be less afraid of execution than imprisonment?
You previously claimed that execution is "a pretty effective deterrent". I provided objective evidence that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent (and not only in the United States). Instead of providing any comparable contrary evidence or acknowledging that you were wrong, you now expect me to prove my point by arguing against an unrealistic hypothetical scenario.
Statement of fact with no evidence:
Because we know for a fact that the criminals are a lot of more afraid of execution. Listen to the guys on death row. These are murderers... shitting themselves.
You've repeatedly made statements like this, without ever providing any supporting evidence.
Statement of fact with no evidence, contradictory position (sometimes called the "kettle logic" fallacy):
The thing is the most violent criminals are not deterred by anything.
Just a few paragraphs ago, you were arguing that capital punishment is an effective deterrent. And in an earlier comment, you said, "It is a pretty effective deterrent. You should see how these hard core multiple murderers break down and cry like babies when they think the axe is going to land on their own necks". Now, to make a different point, you are claiming that nothing is an effective deterrent to "the most violent criminals". (Of course, how you define "the most violent" is also not clear, but I am guessing it at least includes "hard core multiple murderers").
Moving the goalposts, shifting the burden of proof:
You can't argue against execution on the basis that it doesn't deter without addressing that imprisonment doesn't deter either.
Of course one can argue against the efficacy of capital punishment without simultaneously defending other forms of punishment. After having refuted your claim that capital punishment is "a pretty effective deterrent", you now claim that I must also provide an analysis of the efficacy of imprisonment. Furthermore, you claim that "imprisonment doesn't deter", give no objective evidence to support this claim, then expect me to refute it.
Misrepresentation, straw man, argumentum ad populum:
As to your statement that I just "know" executions are cheaper without the endless a
One other thing I meant to include in my last comment.
The vast majority of the human race accepts killing other people as a normal part of life. What is more, the state has an implicit right to do this sort of thing. They could not keep authority if they did not.
Yes, you keep saying that sort of thing: The state must have the right to execute its citizens; if not, then the state loses all authority. But can you provide any coherent explanation as to why this must be true, or provide any evidence to support it? Of course you cannot. The fact that nearly all modern democracies have abolished capital punishment, yet remain able to enforce their laws and prosecute criminals, amounts to a wealth of counterexamples that easily disproves your claim.
As to your not especially widely held religious beliefs, I don't see why I need to care.
Are you responding to my comments or someone else's? At no point have I ever made any reference to my "religious beliefs", which you know nothing about. I truly have no idea what you're talking about.
As to your repeated citation of the US constitution... you're butchering the logic so badly on that point... and doing so with so little regard for any intellectual integrity that I don't have to respond to that bullshit anymore.
You really don't understand this? Then I'll explain it for a third time. The Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishment. Some people think capital punishment is cruel and unusual (including some Supreme Court justices; see below), which is why they think the government should not have the right to execute people. I have never claimed anything more than that. How is that "butchering the logic"? In this context, accusing me of lacking "intellectual integrity" is nothing more than a cheap insult.
As to an invalid court case that was largely regarded at the time to be bullshit... from your own citation: "Chief Justice Burger and Justices Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, and William H. Rehnquist... argued that capital punishment had always been regarded as appropriate under the Anglo-American legal tradition for serious crimes and that the text of the Constitution implicitly authorized United States death penalty laws..."
Well, thanks for at least reading part of the article. Had you read the rest of it, you would have also seen, "Justices Brennan and Marshall concluded that the death penalty was in itself "cruel and unusual punishment", and incompatible with the evolving standards of decency of a contemporary society." So, as I said, U.S. Supreme Court justices have, in written opinions, interpreted the "cruel and unusual" clause to exclude capital punishment. So no, I wasn't wrong. On the other hand, your original claim? You said, "No official interpretation of the US constitution has been read to forbid executions in general." Unless you think the written opinions of Supreme Court justices don't count as "official interpretation", you are definitely wrong.
As to rejecting cruel and unusual punishment, of course not. I simply define such differently than you.
Excellent. Thank you for answering my question. So, let's review your earlier argument. According to you, if someone believes that the state doesn't have the right to execute people, but also believes that the state can impose other penalties, they are a hypocrite and an anarchist (an anarchist because they must believe the state doesn't have the right to do anything). Do you finally see why that doesn't work? You have just acknowledged that you also believe the state doesn't have the right to impose certain punishments, which, by your simplistic logic, must also make you a hypocrite and an anarchist.
In another variation of this argument, you claim that anyone who believes that the government can imprison, but not execute, is logically inconsistent. E.g., "You feel you have a right to lock me a box for 50 years but you don't have a right to shoot me? How do you figure that?" If it really is that simple, then why not substitute any other sort of punishment for the phrase "to shoot me"? Again, you've acknowledged that you do believe some punishments are off limits, so your criticism applies just as well to your beliefs.
I think you've finally come around to the point I've been trying to make for some time. Nearly all of us believe that a government does not have the right to impose cruel and unusual punishments upon its citizens. As you observed, you and many death penalty opponents simply draw the line for "cruel and unusual" at different places. Beyond that, there is no substantive difference. Opposition to the death penalty does not make someone a "hypocrite" or an "anarchist", any more than your opposition to a punishment that you believe to be cruel and unusual makes you a hypocrite or an anarchist.
Fair enough. My apologies for that -- it was unwarranted.
As to no robust evidence that capital punishment deters crime, I know the murderers don't want to be executed. That is meaningful. I also don't see the point in keeping them alive.
In the face of actual data and evidence that capital punishment does not deter crime, you respond with "I know the murderers don't want to be executed. That is meaningful." And, "I also don't see the point in keeping them alive." So, as I said, your view on capital punishment is driven entirely by ideology. You have no evidence, no data, nothing at all except "I know" and "I don't see the point".
You keep using this argument that "if X doesn't work we must do Y which also doesn't work". Is there any robust evidence that life sentences deter crime?
Let my try again to explain the data to you. The comparison is not X versus Y. The comparison is (X + Y) versus X, where X = imprisonment and Y = the death penalty. That is the only comparison we can make with extant data. In other words, we can ask if adding the threat of execution to an existing threat of imprisonment has an increased deterrent effect. And, in general, the best evidence so far suggests there is no meaningful difference (e.g., read the link I gave you in an earlier post as a starting point). Get it? It substantially refutes your claim that the death penalty is a "pretty effective deterrent".
As to executions being more expensive, as I have said repeatedly that is an artifact of the anti execution lobby.
Once again, something you apparently "just know" with no objective data presented to support it. Saying something "repeatedly" does not make it so.
The only reasons left to support executions are ideological. E.g., "they deserve to die", or some notion of justice as revenge. Whatever your reason for supporting state-sanctioned executions, make no mistake that you are motivated by ideology. Those who oppose the death penalty for ideological reasons also happen to have convincing, objective evidence on their side -- you do not.
The US founders executed people quite freely so saying the constitution forbids it is a little rich.
I never said that. Let me remind you: "Many people and countries consider execution to be "cruel and unusual" punishment that can never be justified. It is widely accepted (including in the U.S. Constitution) that a government should never try to keep its people safe by threatening them with cruel and unusual punishment." If you actually bothered to read the rest of my post, you would see I am very clear about this -- the point of contention is whether or not the death penalty is considered "cruel and unusual", not that the Constitution literally forbids capital punishment.
No official interpretation of the US constitution has been read to forbid executions in general.
So that's just bunk.
Your claim that "No official interpretation of the US constitution has been read to forbid executions in general" actually is total bunk, unless you honestly believe that the written opinions of justices on the US Supreme Court doesn't count as "official interpretation".
As to your notion that you're not a hypocrite because you ideology thinks executions are icky and have cooties, that isn't a defense against a hypocrisy charge. You need to cite some logic here. Saying "but I have beliefs and opinions!" is no defense.
Huh? You are totally ignoring the substance of my rebuttal. Did you even read it?
As to limiting my statement, justice systems often don't have limits as to what they can do or rule upon. They limit themselves perhaps within their jurisdiction. But even then sometimes they presume to rule the whole world. It is the nature of justice that it is defined by the power and ambition of the people that wield it.
Again, what? Are you actually rejecting the prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment in the Constitution? You really believe that no form of punishment is or should be off limits to a government?
Well that's a valid criticism however you haven't limited your statements.
Why is this only relevant in executions but not anywhere else? Why can't I apply your argument to everything else?
The problem is that you may be trying to eat your cake and have it too. That is the core of my actual argument. Not a slippery slope argument. I am instead accusing you of hypocrisy. Because you're applying this logic on one specific context and no where else.
I already answered that. Many people and countries consider execution to be "cruel and unusual" punishment that can never be justified. It is widely accepted (including in the U.S. Constitution) that a government should never try to keep its people safe by threatening them with cruel and unusual punishment. That is the standard that "limits my statements."
So you argue that anyone who says on the one hand that the state is not justified in executing people, yet on the other says that the state is allowed to imprison people, is logically inconsistent. E.g., "There is no logical difference between execution and murder versus imprisonment and kidnapping." And, "you'll support a line of logic that undermines the entire government and society and civilization simply to attack capital punishment." And, "You feel you have a right to lock me a box for 50 years but you don't have a right to shoot me? How do you figure that?" Etc. You literally argue that anyone who says the state doesn't have the right to execute people is really an anarchist, because they must therefore reject the legal system and the rule of law entirely.
In other words, you believe that if a government has legitimate authority to imprison its citizens, then by default, it must also have legitimate authority to execute its citizens.
Now, let's be clear: you are most definitely not "limiting your statements", either. I'll repeat what I said in my previous post, to which you did not respond at all: "Why not take your own reasoning to its "logical conclusion"? Your arguments lead to the conclusion that any sort of punishment is acceptable as long as it is preceded by a trial. Do you really believe that? Or do you believe that certain kinds of punishment are never appropriate, even if their use would not be "hypocritical" (by your criteria) for certain kinds of crime?"
If your answer to that last question is "yes" (i.e., you think some kinds of punishment are never justifiable), then I could just as easily accuse you of "applying [your] logic on one specific context and no where else." I am guessing (hoping) that even you think that some kinds of punishment are "cruel and unusual" and off limits to any modern system of justice. So where do you draw the line? If you believe that a government with the right to imprison its citizens automatically also has the right to execute them, why not substitute any more extreme form of punishment for the word "execute"?
Nearly all of us accept that some kinds of punishment are "cruel and unusual", and that provides one standard for deciding what a government can and cannot do to its citizens. If you accept that, then you also must accept that there are situations to which your simplistic argument about government power and authority does not apply. Get it? The only difference here is that you do not think capital punishment is "cruel and unusual", but many other people do. The argument that opposing capital punishment makes one an anarchist is nonsense.
Of course, as others have pointed out, there are more objective reasons to oppose the death penalty, too. Since others have already covered these in some detail, I won't do so here. But I do want to briefly cover one topic. In your previous post, you claim that capital punishment is "a pretty effective deterrent. You should see how these hard core multiple murderers break down and cry like babies when they think the axe is going to land on their own necks."
If this is an attempt to justify the death penalty, it is extremely
Either you admit your error or you're effectively advocating anarchy. At which point there is no law. We'd live in some mad max post apocalyptic hell hole in a week if we followed this to its logical conclusion.
That is a great example of the slippery slope logical fallacy. So in your view, if we (i.e., our society) were to reject the death penalty because we decide it is immoral and hypocritical, then the only logically consistent position is to reject all law entirely, which will lead to the inevitable consequence of a lawless, anarchic society.
In case the absurdity of that is not obvious, consider this: The European Union summarily rejects capital punishment as "cruel and inhuman". In other words, as an instrument of justice, it is immoral and cannot ever be justified, no matter how heinous an offender's crimes. Guided by this premise, many EU states have banned capital punishment for decades. Yet, in no case has this led to a subsequent total rejection of the rule of law, and it doesn't appear that any of these countries are on the brink of anarchy.
Your entire argument rests squarely on the unstated assumption that the purpose of the criminal justice system is tit for tat revenge. You might see it that way, but many of us do not. Take away that assumption, and there is no logical conflict at all with rejecting the death penalty because it is inhumane and hypocritical while also supporting a functional justice system with the power to enforce laws and impose penalties.
Sure, a simple statement like "killing people is illegal, ergo the state is hypocritical if it kills people" is not very insightful. But if one accepts the notion that state-sanctioned execution is "cruel and inhuman", then it is perfectly reasonable to wish for a government that does not try to protect its citizens by threatening them with cruel and inhuman punishment.
Finally, since you like slippery slopes, why not take your own reasoning to its "logical conclusion"? Your arguments lead to the conclusion that any sort of punishment is acceptable as long as it is preceded by a trial. Do you really believe that? Or do you believe that certain kinds of punishment are never appropriate, even if their use would not be "hypocritical" (by your criteria) for certain kinds of crime?
Even before that, though, we need high-quality, doubly blinded trials to establish how well any of these comparison-based forensic methods actually work. Evidently, a key problem with hair comparison was that no one actually had any idea how reliable it was for "matching" a sample to a suspect. It is now obvious that the false positive rate is completely unacceptable.
We should have known this long before anyone even thought about using hair comparison evidence at trial, and the sad thing is that the experiments needed to rigorously evaluate this technique aren't even very complicated. For prosecutors, though, it is undoubtedly a lot more fun to impress juries with your scientific-sounding evidence and experts than it is to ask whether the evidence is actually reliable, and you can bet that the hair comparison "experts" were not in any hurry to show that their work was a sham.
Right, every poor person is poor due to back luck, not personal decisions and life choices.
I never said that, and no reasonably intelligent person could possibly believe that. That is just as ridiculous as your original statement that "all those assembly line/Taco Bell/Walmart people saying they want a "living wage" and $15/hr, maybe you shouldn't have fucked your life up."
The reality, of course, is that some people do make appallingly bad decisions and life choices. But there are also many, many impoverished people who are stuck in circumstances that are largely beyond their control. See unimacs reply for additional thoughts on this, and herearesomemore references.
The vast majority of unsuccessful people career-wise are that way because they didn't do what they needed to do to get a better job.
That is a comforting sentiment for rich people, so it is no surprise that it remains such a persistent cultural myth. How about sharing some evidence with us that substantiates your belief?
So, your view is that: 1) You deserve to be successful because you worked hard, went to community college, and spent time working crappy jobs; and 2) people stuck in dead-end jobs who can't make a living wage are getting what they deserve because they must have "fucked their lives up" somehow.
Please read about the fundamental attribution error and the just-world cognitive bias. In a nutshell, when a person is unsuccessful and suffers misfortune, naive observers tend to assume it is because that person "deserves it" for one reason or another. Your post seems to be a good example of this phenomenon.
I think you are confused about the meaning of the term "selfie stick". In this case, we are talking about a tool used for photography. Most people who own selfie sticks do not have sex with them. I can see how the name "selfie stick" would lead you in that direction, but if you're wanting a discussion about people fucking tools you'll need to look elsewhere.
The fact that Putin's Russia is also a bully does not absolve the US of it's hypocrisy and misdeeds.
Not to mention that, from Snowden's perspective, speculating how he'd be treated if he were to reveal Russian state secrets is almost totally pointless, because there is about 0 probability that he would ever be in such a situation. Does anyone seriously believe that the Russian state security apparatus would hire him for a position in which he'd be handling sensitive information? Of course not. When considering his personal welfare, the only thing he has to weigh is his current life in Russia versus what would happen to him if he were to go back to the U.S.
Whoever this AC is, s/he evidently has a fill-in-the-blank comment template for bashing GTK+ that can be mindlessly reused for any software based on GTK+. Check out this AC comment from a recent story about Inkscape: http://news.slashdot.org/comme.... Notice that most of it is almost word-for-word identical to the parent post. Just do a search and replace to change "Inkscape" to "Xfce" and you end up with today's comment.
That's why the AC ends up making such stupid satements as:
I truly wish that the Xfce devs would port from GTK+ to Qt, so that we users can use it on Windows and OS X...
Huh? Who, exactly, is wanting to run XFCE on "Windows and OS X"? As others have already pointed out, this statement is neither insightful nor relevent. XFCE is a desktop/window management system for *Linux*, and there is absolutely no reason for its developers to care one whit about how easily it could be ported to Windows.
Thanks for the link to the PNAS paper. From what I could tell from an admittedly quick read of the article, though, it makes no claims about a "300 year drought" during the medieval period in North America. What it does say is that drought events were common during this time period, and that they often persisted for one or more decades. For example, the article says, "the 12th century medieval drought persisted with an extent and severity displayed in the worst-case decade, 1146–1155, for two decades, 1140–1159". That's not 300 years of continuous drought. Yes, the overall mean precipitation in the Southwest was lower during the medieval centuries, but that doesn't mean there was continuous drought during this time.
For what it's worth, the conclusions of the PNAS paper are pretty much in total agreement with what the researchers in the NASA study found.
I watched the video. Pathetic. So there is no record of long droughts in the US. But it is going to get worse! I suggest you ask the Anasazi why they left their lands. Oh geez. A 300 year drought without any SUVs and with less population?
+5 insightful? What is insightful about this?
The linked Wikipedia article mentions the supposed "300 year drought" in a single sentence that ends with... wait for it... "citation needed". Nice.
If you actually bother to read TFA, you will see that the entire point is that droughts in the near future are likely to be similar to those that occured around the time the Anasazi were abandoning their villages. The researchers never claim that "there is no record of long droughts in the US". Their conclusion is that there were long droughts in the past, and we are likely to soon see them again.
Your parents should have read to you the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes.
And your arguments seem to be based on appealing to yourself as an authority; e.g. your claim that you "know Earth history and geology well to know that AGW is bunk".
I find PopeRatzo's appeal to legitimate expertise much more compelling.
I absolutely agree that better city and development planning will be essential to deal with this problem. The trend of building huge residential-only developments where residents have to drive everywhere to do *anything* (work, shop, etc.) has surely created massive amounts of traffic.
However, I suspect that even if we are successful in promoting mixed-use developments so people can, in theory, live near their jobs, it will have much less impact on traffic than we would hope. For much of the 20th century, it was typical for only one person in a household to work full time. Today, though, both partners in middle- to lower-income families often must work full time just to make ends meet. Because of wage stagnation, today's two-income families actually have less discretionary income than comparable single-income families of a few generations ago. And, of course, many people want to have their own career regardless of what their partner does.
The consequence is that efforts to eliminate commuting through intelligent urban planning would probably have been far more successful in the '50s and '60s than they could be today. For many couples with two careers, it just won't be possible to live where neither person has to commute. Furthermore, couples often decide to live somewhere that is approximately equidistant between their two jobs so that neither person has to carry the full commuting burden. Thus, you still end up with two cars on the road every day, and better city planning seems unlikely to change that.
Thanks for that informative comment. I haven't had such terrible luck running GTK+ applications cross-platform, but you (and others) have clearly had some very bad experiences. And I readily admit that getting GTK+ to work on OSX is a pain. It really is too bad that the support isn't better. There are some good ideas in the GTK+ toolkit, and Cairo is nice for graphics work, but I agree -- developers ultimately want something that "just works".
The portability of GTK+ is, to put it politely, utter rubbish.
There's nothing polite about derogatory hyperbole. The portability of the Windows and OSX UI frameworks could properly be called "utter rubbish", because they're not intended to be portable at all. In contrast, GTK+ apps can and do run on both Windows and OSX, and many applications work quite well on both platforms. I don't think that can reasonably be described as "utter rubbish".
I haven't been able to ever get it working properly under OS X. It didn't even get to the point where it showed a UI, the last time I tried it.
Developing GTK+ apps on OSX is not as easy as it should be, but in my experience, at least, it's not all that difficult, either. It would be great to see this improved, though.
The central part of the EFF's plan is: encryption, encryption, encryption.
Encryption everywhere is great. But as long as the majority of us remain willing to hand over everything about our personal lives to Facebook, Google, etc., then mass surveillance by either private entities or governments will remain ridiculously easy. To me, that seems like the really hard problem to solve. There is no way those companies will deny themselves access to their users' unencrypted data.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to clarify, there is no "gene for ... Downs Syndrome". Down syndrome is caused by a partial or complete extra (i.e., third) copy of chromosome 21. Thus, it is caused by a failure of meiosis during gamete development, not by a particular allele of any one gene or group of genes.
Not to mention that some rats, like the Norway rat, have become synanthropic and managed to colonize much of the world. The same is true for numerous insect species.
For some time now, it has not been clear to me whether your comments were sincere, honest attempts at meaningful dialogue, or if you were merely trying to incite anger or frustration. I assumed the former and tried to take you as seriously as I could until my patience has finally run out. Judging from some of your exchanges with other slashdotters, I seem to have hung in there a lot longer than most.
In any case, you consistently use the tactic of filling your posts with a variety of common logical fallacies. The effect is that you force your opponents to have to expend effort trying to keep a discussion on topic, defend themselves from straw man attacks, restate points made earlier, and so on. It appears that other slashdotters often either become hostile and angry, which makes them easy for you to attack, or they simply get exhausted with spinning their wheels and give up.
I am well aware that this might all be deliberate on your part, and you are merely trying to bait people into getting upset or angry. In the interest of giving you the benefit of the doubt, though, I will take a detailed look at several of your recent posts so you can see exactly what I'm talking about.
First, we have this comment, in which you make the following logical fallacies, among others.
Moving the goalposts:
If you executed anyone that would get a sentence of 30 years or more... would that not be as likely to deter people as simple imprisonment? You wouldn't claim that people would be less afraid of execution than imprisonment?
You previously claimed that execution is "a pretty effective deterrent". I provided objective evidence that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent (and not only in the United States). Instead of providing any comparable contrary evidence or acknowledging that you were wrong, you now expect me to prove my point by arguing against an unrealistic hypothetical scenario.
Statement of fact with no evidence:
Because we know for a fact that the criminals are a lot of more afraid of execution. Listen to the guys on death row. These are murderers... shitting themselves.
You've repeatedly made statements like this, without ever providing any supporting evidence.
Statement of fact with no evidence, contradictory position (sometimes called the "kettle logic" fallacy):
The thing is the most violent criminals are not deterred by anything.
Just a few paragraphs ago, you were arguing that capital punishment is an effective deterrent. And in an earlier comment, you said, "It is a pretty effective deterrent. You should see how these hard core multiple murderers break down and cry like babies when they think the axe is going to land on their own necks". Now, to make a different point, you are claiming that nothing is an effective deterrent to "the most violent criminals". (Of course, how you define "the most violent" is also not clear, but I am guessing it at least includes "hard core multiple murderers").
Moving the goalposts, shifting the burden of proof:
You can't argue against execution on the basis that it doesn't deter without addressing that imprisonment doesn't deter either.
Of course one can argue against the efficacy of capital punishment without simultaneously defending other forms of punishment. After having refuted your claim that capital punishment is "a pretty effective deterrent", you now claim that I must also provide an analysis of the efficacy of imprisonment. Furthermore, you claim that "imprisonment doesn't deter", give no objective evidence to support this claim, then expect me to refute it.
Misrepresentation, straw man, argumentum ad populum:
As to your statement that I just "know" executions are cheaper without the endless a
One other thing I meant to include in my last comment.
The vast majority of the human race accepts killing other people as a normal part of life. What is more, the state has an implicit right to do this sort of thing. They could not keep authority if they did not.
Yes, you keep saying that sort of thing: The state must have the right to execute its citizens; if not, then the state loses all authority. But can you provide any coherent explanation as to why this must be true, or provide any evidence to support it? Of course you cannot. The fact that nearly all modern democracies have abolished capital punishment, yet remain able to enforce their laws and prosecute criminals, amounts to a wealth of counterexamples that easily disproves your claim.
As to your not especially widely held religious beliefs, I don't see why I need to care.
Are you responding to my comments or someone else's? At no point have I ever made any reference to my "religious beliefs", which you know nothing about. I truly have no idea what you're talking about.
As to your repeated citation of the US constitution... you're butchering the logic so badly on that point... and doing so with so little regard for any intellectual integrity that I don't have to respond to that bullshit anymore.
You really don't understand this? Then I'll explain it for a third time. The Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishment. Some people think capital punishment is cruel and unusual (including some Supreme Court justices; see below), which is why they think the government should not have the right to execute people. I have never claimed anything more than that. How is that "butchering the logic"? In this context, accusing me of lacking "intellectual integrity" is nothing more than a cheap insult.
As to an invalid court case that was largely regarded at the time to be bullshit... from your own citation: "Chief Justice Burger and Justices Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, and William H. Rehnquist ... argued that capital punishment had always been regarded as appropriate under the Anglo-American legal tradition for serious crimes and that the text of the Constitution implicitly authorized United States death penalty laws..."
Well, thanks for at least reading part of the article. Had you read the rest of it, you would have also seen, "Justices Brennan and Marshall concluded that the death penalty was in itself "cruel and unusual punishment", and incompatible with the evolving standards of decency of a contemporary society." So, as I said, U.S. Supreme Court justices have, in written opinions, interpreted the "cruel and unusual" clause to exclude capital punishment. So no, I wasn't wrong. On the other hand, your original claim? You said, "No official interpretation of the US constitution has been read to forbid executions in general." Unless you think the written opinions of Supreme Court justices don't count as "official interpretation", you are definitely wrong.
As to rejecting cruel and unusual punishment, of course not. I simply define such differently than you.
Excellent. Thank you for answering my question. So, let's review your earlier argument. According to you, if someone believes that the state doesn't have the right to execute people, but also believes that the state can impose other penalties, they are a hypocrite and an anarchist (an anarchist because they must believe the state doesn't have the right to do anything). Do you finally see why that doesn't work? You have just acknowledged that you also believe the state doesn't have the right to impose certain punishments, which, by your simplistic logic, must also make you a hypocrite and an anarchist.
In another variation of this argument, you claim that anyone who believes that the government can imprison, but not execute, is logically inconsistent. E.g., "You feel you have a right to lock me a box for 50 years but you don't have a right to shoot me? How do you figure that?" If it really is that simple, then why not substitute any other sort of punishment for the phrase "to shoot me"? Again, you've acknowledged that you do believe some punishments are off limits, so your criticism applies just as well to your beliefs.
I think you've finally come around to the point I've been trying to make for some time. Nearly all of us believe that a government does not have the right to impose cruel and unusual punishments upon its citizens. As you observed, you and many death penalty opponents simply draw the line for "cruel and unusual" at different places. Beyond that, there is no substantive difference. Opposition to the death penalty does not make someone a "hypocrite" or an "anarchist", any more than your opposition to a punishment that you believe to be cruel and unusual makes you a hypocrite or an anarchist.
Skipping past the baseless personal attacks. :)
Fair enough. My apologies for that -- it was unwarranted.
As to no robust evidence that capital punishment deters crime, I know the murderers don't want to be executed. That is meaningful. I also don't see the point in keeping them alive.
In the face of actual data and evidence that capital punishment does not deter crime, you respond with "I know the murderers don't want to be executed. That is meaningful." And, "I also don't see the point in keeping them alive." So, as I said, your view on capital punishment is driven entirely by ideology. You have no evidence, no data, nothing at all except "I know" and "I don't see the point".
You keep using this argument that "if X doesn't work we must do Y which also doesn't work". Is there any robust evidence that life sentences deter crime?
Let my try again to explain the data to you. The comparison is not X versus Y. The comparison is (X + Y) versus X, where X = imprisonment and Y = the death penalty. That is the only comparison we can make with extant data. In other words, we can ask if adding the threat of execution to an existing threat of imprisonment has an increased deterrent effect. And, in general, the best evidence so far suggests there is no meaningful difference (e.g., read the link I gave you in an earlier post as a starting point). Get it? It substantially refutes your claim that the death penalty is a "pretty effective deterrent".
As to executions being more expensive, as I have said repeatedly that is an artifact of the anti execution lobby.
Once again, something you apparently "just know" with no objective data presented to support it. Saying something "repeatedly" does not make it so.
Yes, poor Karmashock, always having to defend himself/herself from the ruthless "ideologues".
The amusing thing about your persecution complex is that your perspective on this matter is driven entirely by ideology. As has already been pointed out, there is no robust evidence that capital punishment deters crime to any meaningful extent, and it is a much more expensive proposition than the alternative of imprisonment. In other words, in the United States, we know that capital punishment does not make us any safer than does imprisonment, and that it costs a lot more. So based on this objective reality, there is no rational reason to persist with executions, at least in the United States.
The only reasons left to support executions are ideological. E.g., "they deserve to die", or some notion of justice as revenge. Whatever your reason for supporting state-sanctioned executions, make no mistake that you are motivated by ideology. Those who oppose the death penalty for ideological reasons also happen to have convincing, objective evidence on their side -- you do not.
The US founders executed people quite freely so saying the constitution forbids it is a little rich.
I never said that. Let me remind you: "Many people and countries consider execution to be "cruel and unusual" punishment that can never be justified. It is widely accepted (including in the U.S. Constitution) that a government should never try to keep its people safe by threatening them with cruel and unusual punishment." If you actually bothered to read the rest of my post, you would see I am very clear about this -- the point of contention is whether or not the death penalty is considered "cruel and unusual", not that the Constitution literally forbids capital punishment.
No official interpretation of the US constitution has been read to forbid executions in general.
So that's just bunk.
Your claim that "No official interpretation of the US constitution has been read to forbid executions in general" actually is total bunk, unless you honestly believe that the written opinions of justices on the US Supreme Court doesn't count as "official interpretation".
As to your notion that you're not a hypocrite because you ideology thinks executions are icky and have cooties, that isn't a defense against a hypocrisy charge. You need to cite some logic here. Saying "but I have beliefs and opinions!" is no defense.
Huh? You are totally ignoring the substance of my rebuttal. Did you even read it?
As to limiting my statement, justice systems often don't have limits as to what they can do or rule upon. They limit themselves perhaps within their jurisdiction. But even then sometimes they presume to rule the whole world. It is the nature of justice that it is defined by the power and ambition of the people that wield it.
Again, what? Are you actually rejecting the prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment in the Constitution? You really believe that no form of punishment is or should be off limits to a government?
Well that's a valid criticism however you haven't limited your statements. Why is this only relevant in executions but not anywhere else? Why can't I apply your argument to everything else? The problem is that you may be trying to eat your cake and have it too. That is the core of my actual argument. Not a slippery slope argument. I am instead accusing you of hypocrisy. Because you're applying this logic on one specific context and no where else.
I already answered that. Many people and countries consider execution to be "cruel and unusual" punishment that can never be justified. It is widely accepted (including in the U.S. Constitution) that a government should never try to keep its people safe by threatening them with cruel and unusual punishment. That is the standard that "limits my statements."
So you argue that anyone who says on the one hand that the state is not justified in executing people, yet on the other says that the state is allowed to imprison people, is logically inconsistent. E.g., "There is no logical difference between execution and murder versus imprisonment and kidnapping." And, "you'll support a line of logic that undermines the entire government and society and civilization simply to attack capital punishment." And, "You feel you have a right to lock me a box for 50 years but you don't have a right to shoot me? How do you figure that?" Etc. You literally argue that anyone who says the state doesn't have the right to execute people is really an anarchist, because they must therefore reject the legal system and the rule of law entirely.
In other words, you believe that if a government has legitimate authority to imprison its citizens, then by default, it must also have legitimate authority to execute its citizens.
Now, let's be clear: you are most definitely not "limiting your statements", either. I'll repeat what I said in my previous post, to which you did not respond at all: "Why not take your own reasoning to its "logical conclusion"? Your arguments lead to the conclusion that any sort of punishment is acceptable as long as it is preceded by a trial. Do you really believe that? Or do you believe that certain kinds of punishment are never appropriate, even if their use would not be "hypocritical" (by your criteria) for certain kinds of crime?"
If your answer to that last question is "yes" (i.e., you think some kinds of punishment are never justifiable), then I could just as easily accuse you of "applying [your] logic on one specific context and no where else." I am guessing (hoping) that even you think that some kinds of punishment are "cruel and unusual" and off limits to any modern system of justice. So where do you draw the line? If you believe that a government with the right to imprison its citizens automatically also has the right to execute them, why not substitute any more extreme form of punishment for the word "execute"?
Nearly all of us accept that some kinds of punishment are "cruel and unusual", and that provides one standard for deciding what a government can and cannot do to its citizens. If you accept that, then you also must accept that there are situations to which your simplistic argument about government power and authority does not apply. Get it? The only difference here is that you do not think capital punishment is "cruel and unusual", but many other people do. The argument that opposing capital punishment makes one an anarchist is nonsense.
Of course, as others have pointed out, there are more objective reasons to oppose the death penalty, too. Since others have already covered these in some detail, I won't do so here. But I do want to briefly cover one topic. In your previous post, you claim that capital punishment is "a pretty effective deterrent. You should see how these hard core multiple murderers break down and cry like babies when they think the axe is going to land on their own necks."
If this is an attempt to justify the death penalty, it is extremely
Either you admit your error or you're effectively advocating anarchy. At which point there is no law. We'd live in some mad max post apocalyptic hell hole in a week if we followed this to its logical conclusion.
That is a great example of the slippery slope logical fallacy. So in your view, if we (i.e., our society) were to reject the death penalty because we decide it is immoral and hypocritical, then the only logically consistent position is to reject all law entirely, which will lead to the inevitable consequence of a lawless, anarchic society.
In case the absurdity of that is not obvious, consider this: The European Union summarily rejects capital punishment as "cruel and inhuman". In other words, as an instrument of justice, it is immoral and cannot ever be justified, no matter how heinous an offender's crimes. Guided by this premise, many EU states have banned capital punishment for decades. Yet, in no case has this led to a subsequent total rejection of the rule of law, and it doesn't appear that any of these countries are on the brink of anarchy.
Your entire argument rests squarely on the unstated assumption that the purpose of the criminal justice system is tit for tat revenge. You might see it that way, but many of us do not. Take away that assumption, and there is no logical conflict at all with rejecting the death penalty because it is inhumane and hypocritical while also supporting a functional justice system with the power to enforce laws and impose penalties.
Sure, a simple statement like "killing people is illegal, ergo the state is hypocritical if it kills people" is not very insightful. But if one accepts the notion that state-sanctioned execution is "cruel and inhuman", then it is perfectly reasonable to wish for a government that does not try to protect its citizens by threatening them with cruel and inhuman punishment.
Finally, since you like slippery slopes, why not take your own reasoning to its "logical conclusion"? Your arguments lead to the conclusion that any sort of punishment is acceptable as long as it is preceded by a trial. Do you really believe that? Or do you believe that certain kinds of punishment are never appropriate, even if their use would not be "hypocritical" (by your criteria) for certain kinds of crime?
Even before that, though, we need high-quality, doubly blinded trials to establish how well any of these comparison-based forensic methods actually work. Evidently, a key problem with hair comparison was that no one actually had any idea how reliable it was for "matching" a sample to a suspect. It is now obvious that the false positive rate is completely unacceptable.
We should have known this long before anyone even thought about using hair comparison evidence at trial, and the sad thing is that the experiments needed to rigorously evaluate this technique aren't even very complicated. For prosecutors, though, it is undoubtedly a lot more fun to impress juries with your scientific-sounding evidence and experts than it is to ask whether the evidence is actually reliable, and you can bet that the hair comparison "experts" were not in any hurry to show that their work was a sham.
Right, every poor person is poor due to back luck, not personal decisions and life choices.
I never said that, and no reasonably intelligent person could possibly believe that. That is just as ridiculous as your original statement that "all those assembly line/Taco Bell/Walmart people saying they want a "living wage" and $15/hr, maybe you shouldn't have fucked your life up."
The reality, of course, is that some people do make appallingly bad decisions and life choices. But there are also many, many impoverished people who are stuck in circumstances that are largely beyond their control. See unimacs reply for additional thoughts on this, and here are some more references.
The vast majority of unsuccessful people career-wise are that way because they didn't do what they needed to do to get a better job.
That is a comforting sentiment for rich people, so it is no surprise that it remains such a persistent cultural myth. How about sharing some evidence with us that substantiates your belief?
So, your view is that: 1) You deserve to be successful because you worked hard, went to community college, and spent time working crappy jobs; and 2) people stuck in dead-end jobs who can't make a living wage are getting what they deserve because they must have "fucked their lives up" somehow.
Please read about the fundamental attribution error and the just-world cognitive bias. In a nutshell, when a person is unsuccessful and suffers misfortune, naive observers tend to assume it is because that person "deserves it" for one reason or another. Your post seems to be a good example of this phenomenon.
Actually, it has been estimated there are so many deep-ocean species, that bioluminescence might be the most common method of communication on earth.
I'm curious if you have a source for that estimate (because I actually would like to read more).
You are all fucking tools
I think you are confused about the meaning of the term "selfie stick". In this case, we are talking about a tool used for photography. Most people who own selfie sticks do not have sex with them. I can see how the name "selfie stick" would lead you in that direction, but if you're wanting a discussion about people fucking tools you'll need to look elsewhere.
The fact that Putin's Russia is also a bully does not absolve the US of it's hypocrisy and misdeeds.
Not to mention that, from Snowden's perspective, speculating how he'd be treated if he were to reveal Russian state secrets is almost totally pointless, because there is about 0 probability that he would ever be in such a situation. Does anyone seriously believe that the Russian state security apparatus would hire him for a position in which he'd be handling sensitive information? Of course not. When considering his personal welfare, the only thing he has to weigh is his current life in Russia versus what would happen to him if he were to go back to the U.S.
Whoever this AC is, s/he evidently has a fill-in-the-blank comment template for bashing GTK+ that can be mindlessly reused for any software based on GTK+. Check out this AC comment from a recent story about Inkscape: http://news.slashdot.org/comme.... Notice that most of it is almost word-for-word identical to the parent post. Just do a search and replace to change "Inkscape" to "Xfce" and you end up with today's comment.
That's why the AC ends up making such stupid satements as:
I truly wish that the Xfce devs would port from GTK+ to Qt, so that we users can use it on Windows and OS X...
Huh? Who, exactly, is wanting to run XFCE on "Windows and OS X"? As others have already pointed out, this statement is neither insightful nor relevent. XFCE is a desktop/window management system for *Linux*, and there is absolutely no reason for its developers to care one whit about how easily it could be ported to Windows.
Thanks for the link to the PNAS paper. From what I could tell from an admittedly quick read of the article, though, it makes no claims about a "300 year drought" during the medieval period in North America. What it does say is that drought events were common during this time period, and that they often persisted for one or more decades. For example, the article says, "the 12th century medieval drought persisted with an extent and severity displayed in the worst-case decade, 1146–1155, for two decades, 1140–1159". That's not 300 years of continuous drought. Yes, the overall mean precipitation in the Southwest was lower during the medieval centuries, but that doesn't mean there was continuous drought during this time.
For what it's worth, the conclusions of the PNAS paper are pretty much in total agreement with what the researchers in the NASA study found.
I watched the video. Pathetic. So there is no record of long droughts in the US. But it is going to get worse! I suggest you ask the Anasazi why they left their lands. Oh geez. A 300 year drought without any SUVs and with less population?
+5 insightful? What is insightful about this?
The linked Wikipedia article mentions the supposed "300 year drought" in a single sentence that ends with... wait for it... "citation needed". Nice.
If you actually bother to read TFA, you will see that the entire point is that droughts in the near future are likely to be similar to those that occured around the time the Anasazi were abandoning their villages. The researchers never claim that "there is no record of long droughts in the US". Their conclusion is that there were long droughts in the past, and we are likely to soon see them again.
That's an appeal to authority argument PopeRatzo.
Your parents should have read to you the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes.
And your arguments seem to be based on appealing to yourself as an authority; e.g. your claim that you "know Earth history and geology well to know that AGW is bunk".
I find PopeRatzo's appeal to legitimate expertise much more compelling.
I absolutely agree that better city and development planning will be essential to deal with this problem. The trend of building huge residential-only developments where residents have to drive everywhere to do *anything* (work, shop, etc.) has surely created massive amounts of traffic.
However, I suspect that even if we are successful in promoting mixed-use developments so people can, in theory, live near their jobs, it will have much less impact on traffic than we would hope. For much of the 20th century, it was typical for only one person in a household to work full time. Today, though, both partners in middle- to lower-income families often must work full time just to make ends meet. Because of wage stagnation, today's two-income families actually have less discretionary income than comparable single-income families of a few generations ago. And, of course, many people want to have their own career regardless of what their partner does.
The consequence is that efforts to eliminate commuting through intelligent urban planning would probably have been far more successful in the '50s and '60s than they could be today. For many couples with two careers, it just won't be possible to live where neither person has to commute. Furthermore, couples often decide to live somewhere that is approximately equidistant between their two jobs so that neither person has to carry the full commuting burden. Thus, you still end up with two cars on the road every day, and better city planning seems unlikely to change that.
Thanks for that informative comment. I haven't had such terrible luck running GTK+ applications cross-platform, but you (and others) have clearly had some very bad experiences. And I readily admit that getting GTK+ to work on OSX is a pain. It really is too bad that the support isn't better. There are some good ideas in the GTK+ toolkit, and Cairo is nice for graphics work, but I agree -- developers ultimately want something that "just works".
The portability of GTK+ is, to put it politely, utter rubbish.
There's nothing polite about derogatory hyperbole. The portability of the Windows and OSX UI frameworks could properly be called "utter rubbish", because they're not intended to be portable at all. In contrast, GTK+ apps can and do run on both Windows and OSX, and many applications work quite well on both platforms. I don't think that can reasonably be described as "utter rubbish".
I haven't been able to ever get it working properly under OS X. It didn't even get to the point where it showed a UI, the last time I tried it.
Developing GTK+ apps on OSX is not as easy as it should be, but in my experience, at least, it's not all that difficult, either. It would be great to see this improved, though.
Can Students Have Too Much Tech?
Betteridge's law of headlines says the answer is... wait a minute. TFA says the answer is "yes"?!?
Does this researcher know she has disproved one of the most oft-cited Slashdot axioms?
The central part of the EFF's plan is: encryption, encryption, encryption.
Encryption everywhere is great. But as long as the majority of us remain willing to hand over everything about our personal lives to Facebook, Google, etc., then mass surveillance by either private entities or governments will remain ridiculously easy. To me, that seems like the really hard problem to solve. There is no way those companies will deny themselves access to their users' unencrypted data.