One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
This is the first polemic against Pyramids I've ever come across. Excellent stuff. Very PB.com.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
That's not the point. Some of these people will initially doubtless have been convicted of drugs offences, or other serious offences, others will not. Some will have been on community sentences for, say, criminal damage, or TWOC, or benefit fraud. Getting back to the point, you're advocating hanging every single one of these individuals because they might have gone on to commit murder. Which is a form of preventative human culling. Quite the step.
Even just hanging the killers would save dozens of people per decade:
Over 30 killers killed again after being freed from prison between 2000/1 and 2010/11, statistics show.
Figures released by the Home Office show 29 people with homicide convictions went on to commit murder and six went on to commit manslaughter.
Even when we had capital punishment, most murderers had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, which then as now, meant release after 10+ years.
In reality, public opinion would not accept that *all* murderers should be executed, only the worst. But, the devil is in the detail, of deciding which are the worst.
The Birmingham 6, Bridgewater 4, Guildford 4, Cardiff 3, Judith Ward and Stefan Kizsko would have been slam dunk swingers
I can never understand why the women who lied about Kizsko for shit and giggles, were never prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.
Detectives were also as dodgy as f***. Weren't they aware at trial that Kizsco was physically incapable of leaving the key evidence at the crime scene because he had a medical condition that meant he couldn't produce semen?
The trial of the Coppers who fitted up the Cardiff 3 was either a hilarious comedy of errors or a disgusting cover up. South Wales Police "lost" all the evidence on the eve of trial so the accused Coppers walked free. After the verdicts the file was found again. Handy, that.
There's something dodgy about the recording systems in Cardiff. As part of my Family History research I asked the Education people in Glamorgan about my father's school records in that County. They said they didn't have any, he must have left school at 14. However, I have his School Certificate and HIghers certificate.
(Narrator: the "1" code in the postcode suffix/inward code indicates the post sorting office for the area and is not necessarily the centre of town)
Over Christmas I was speaking to a relative in his seventies, who hadn't realized until that point that the RH in his postcode stood for Red Hill.
When I lived in Aberystwyth it took me a while to figure out what SY represents.
Abertawe.
Edit: ha, no it isn’t, I too lived there and had it wrong all that time!
That's Swansea.
They should have made it AM or AW just to confuse the fuck out of everybody.
Especially HD2, late of this board, who groused loudly about getting notices in Welsh from RM despite living in Shropshire, because Shrewsbury covered the Mid Wales area.
Could be worse. We get Welsh up here occasionally, confused with Gaelic, on things like road signs, though at least it's appropriate sort of given the Brythonic placenames (you'd think HD2 would have understood that).
Just been reading a history of the Clifton to Hotwells railway* (about 140m long - but mostly straight up) including its use as a secure wartime BBC engineering control centre. Apparently there was a foulup with the recordings and a Prof of Welsh who was out with the services in Egypt was very surprised to hear a discussion of sheep or some other suitably Cymric topic in that language over the Arabic channel of the BBC World Service ...
*Edit: in Bristol, the site being between I.K. Brunel's posthumous suspension bridge and very much not posthumous swing bridge.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
Given my day job, I can confidently say that 99% of all cash transactions are something to do with dodging taxes, drugs, and/or wider criminality.
If you use cash you are on the side of the criminals and tax dodgers as well as making the lives harder for legitimate businesses.
Every week I go to the cash point and take out a fixed amount of cash. It helps me budget during the week. I also get the slip that tells me how much money I have and enter that in a spreadsheet. I have been doing that for more decades than I like to think.
Just go the whole hog and fucking move into Beamish.
I think the cashpoints in the 1820s still used CRTs, and only worked if the rubber band was wound up.
Nah, they were getting really excited about the new steam engines with mechanical processing. Mr Babbage and all that.
That was all TechBroHype. Government invested a fortune and got nothing. The mechanical computing market collapsed for decades.
Clement and then Whitworth made fortunes of delivering bit for machines that were never built. They used the money to build their own businesses at government expense.
The financial enquiry still hasn’t reported - the specific enquiry into the usefulness of the project showed it was a waste of time.
Isn't that being more than a little unfair on Joey Whitworth?
Clement, in particular, optimised his return from the Difference Machine contracts. Rather well.
Whitworth wasn’t far behind.
Do you have any details on that please, as I've not heard of that accusation before. Joseph Whitworth was twelve years younger than Babbage, and twenty-four younger than Clement. He was just thirty when the Difference Engine project was scrapped by the government, so was hardly a senior partner in the relationship. Besides, AIUI he only started working for Clement in 1830, and Clement and Babbage's falling out was the year after.
Given what they were trying to do, and Babbage's need for unprecedented precision, it is unsurprising they had massive difficulties in making the thing. Probably not helped by Babbage's many changes of plan...
Not really an accusation. The government ended up with nothing. Babbage kinda complete the design to Diff Eng 2 - but never finished building anything. Clement and Whitworth built big businesses on the back of it.
Whitworth started his own company while working for Clement, effectively becoming a subcontractor.
https://amzn.eu/d/fExZUwr is a good book on the overall project, why it failed and the fun with actually building No. 2
Babbage's machine did not really advance computing, but thanks to it Britain made enormous advances in precision engineering.
The Trump ban on federal employee WFH and the hiring freeze may have looked smart on paper but in my little corner of the world it is going to cause a huge amount of damage.
Around 95% of US Patent and Trademark Office staff, including examiners and judicial personnel, work remotely. All are highly skilled, highly qualified and highly coveted. They have all just been told they have to return to the office. The problem is (1) the office is not big enough (it can house 25% of staff max); (2) most staff do not live within commutable distance anyway; and (3) they can al move to other jobs pretty easily.
So, the upshot is that the backlog of examinations is likely to grow very quickly, meaning US companies that want patents are going to have to wait far longer to get them, while disputes about grants will also take much longer to resolve. The impact on smaller businesses looking for investment will be significant and hugely negative.
This whole thing is a Musk wheeze. Move fast and break things is the silicon valley bro approach.
We’re going to find out how much breakage the US can take I guess.
Yes, the septic tank is heading the way of a failed state with all the grant freezes from the NIH, foreign aid, medicaid, redundancies etc.
It will be interesting to see how people cope. It's good to be a safe distance away.
Errr ... plenty of airliners full of bird flu (human-adapted variety) coming to an airport near you ere long?
Yep. This is why all polling about Starmer being shit is utterly irrelevant. How he leads us through the pandemic that is coming will be far more relevant frankly.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
Plenty of pyramids since the Egyptians - especially in Mexico. They range from Teotihuacan to Tenochtitlan - over sixteen centuries - and they include the biggest pyramid in the world at Cholula - yes, bigger than Giza
There’s something very satisfying about a really good pyramid. Those at Teotihuacan are particularly noomy
In short: you’re talking your usual misinformed nonsense
What’s happened to me. I used to do drugs and be bad
Now I have become the sort of person that buys artisanal handwoven throws
It’s from Kachin. $105
I was going to say how rubbish it is, but it's actually not a bad effort for the 8-year-old who probably made it.
Being soaked in the tears of the 8 year old slave who made it counters any Woke entirely.
It wasn’t a slave. Kachin Burma has a long noble tradition of hand woven cotton
“Kachin textiles are not merely aesthetic but play an essential role in social and ceremonial life. Traditionally, they are worn during weddings, festivals (Manau celebrations), and rites of passage. Men wear intricately woven longyis (sarongs), while women wear htameins (skirts) paired with elaborately embroidered jackets and headdresses. Warriors and leaders historically wore finely woven garments as symbols of status
Kachin textiles are renowned and highly prized by collectors for their bold geometric patterns, intricate embroidery, and bright contrasting colors. Common motifs include:
Zigzags & diamonds: Representing mountains and rivers, key features of Kachin landscapes.
Animal symbols: Elephants, deer, birds, and mythical creatures, often linked to animist beliefs.
Tribal patterns: Each Kachin sub-group (such as the Jinghpaw, Rawang, or Lisu) has distinct designs that indicate regional or clan identity.”
$105! Bargain. I utterly adore it
Is that your hotel room. I would be seriously concerned if you made your bed up every day like that in NW1.
HW1 is a bit suburban, n'est-ce pas?
I spent several years living in EC2.
EC2 is sweet
It’s my proud boast that I have lived in nearly all the “1s”
W1. SW1, EC1, N1, WC1, E1 and now NW1
Only one missing is SE1. But I’ll cope
A pedant notes: there are postcodes outside London too.
But that is quite remarkable. The average first number in my postcode is 13 1/8. If it's weighted by the length of time I've spent there it's 16.7. And that's someone who's lived somewhere fairly urban all his life (though my 1 "1" was DL1, so my least metropolitan address).
You must have a remarkably low average postcode score.
Actually this is true
The only other places I have lived in the UK are Hereford - HR4 - and Truro - TR1 - TR1!!
So, that’s 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 1
Mean postcode score of 1 1/3. Remarkable. My guess is that there will be no-one in the country with 9 (or more) different UK adresses with a lower score.
For contrast, can any pb-ers give us an unsually high score?
I love this kind of shit.
For me 90/5/2/2
So a mean score of 24.5
90?! The only 90 I know is Manchester Airport. Which presumably wasn't your address.
Hm. A bit of research also allows Worksop, Solihull and somewhere in Glasgow as possibilities
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
This is the first polemic against Pyramids I've ever come across. Excellent stuff. Very PB.com.
If there is one thing pyramids are demonstrably not, it is pointless. It's at the top.
But I agree with kinabalu. Solid effort and post of the day.
The Trump ban on federal employee WFH and the hiring freeze may have looked smart on paper but in my little corner of the world it is going to cause a huge amount of damage.
Around 95% of US Patent and Trademark Office staff, including examiners and judicial personnel, work remotely. All are highly skilled, highly qualified and highly coveted. They have all just been told they have to return to the office. The problem is (1) the office is not big enough (it can house 25% of staff max); (2) most staff do not live within commutable distance anyway; and (3) they can al move to other jobs pretty easily.
So, the upshot is that the backlog of examinations is likely to grow very quickly, meaning US companies that want patents are going to have to wait far longer to get them, while disputes about grants will also take much longer to resolve. The impact on smaller businesses looking for investment will be significant and hugely negative.
This whole thing is a Musk wheeze. Move fast and break things is the silicon valley bro approach.
We’re going to find out how much breakage the US can take I guess.
Yes, the septic tank is heading the way of a failed state with all the grant freezes from the NIH, foreign aid, medicaid, redundancies etc.
It will be interesting to see how people cope. It's good to be a safe distance away.
Errr ... plenty of airliners full of bird flu (human-adapted variety) coming to an airport near you ere long?
Yep. This is why all polling about Starmer being shit is utterly irrelevant. How he leads us through the pandemic that is coming will be far more relevant frankly.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
This is the first polemic against Pyramids I've ever come across. Excellent stuff. Very PB.com.
If there is one thing pyramids are demonstrably not, it is pointless. It's at the top.
But I agree with kinabalu. Solid effort and post of the day.
Given my day job, I can confidently say that 99% of all cash transactions are something to do with dodging taxes, drugs, and/or wider criminality.
If you use cash you are on the side of the criminals and tax dodgers as well as making the lives harder for legitimate businesses.
Every week I go to the cash point and take out a fixed amount of cash. It helps me budget during the week. I also get the slip that tells me how much money I have and enter that in a spreadsheet. I have been doing that for more decades than I like to think.
Just go the whole hog and fucking move into Beamish.
I think the cashpoints in the 1820s still used CRTs, and only worked if the rubber band was wound up.
Nah, they were getting really excited about the new steam engines with mechanical processing. Mr Babbage and all that.
That was all TechBroHype. Government invested a fortune and got nothing. The mechanical computing market collapsed for decades.
Clement and then Whitworth made fortunes of delivering bit for machines that were never built. They used the money to build their own businesses at government expense.
The financial enquiry still hasn’t reported - the specific enquiry into the usefulness of the project showed it was a waste of time.
Isn't that being more than a little unfair on Joey Whitworth?
Clement, in particular, optimised his return from the Difference Machine contracts. Rather well.
Whitworth wasn’t far behind.
Do you have any details on that please, as I've not heard of that accusation before. Joseph Whitworth was twelve years younger than Babbage, and twenty-four younger than Clement. He was just thirty when the Difference Engine project was scrapped by the government, so was hardly a senior partner in the relationship. Besides, AIUI he only started working for Clement in 1830, and Clement and Babbage's falling out was the year after.
Given what they were trying to do, and Babbage's need for unprecedented precision, it is unsurprising they had massive difficulties in making the thing. Probably not helped by Babbage's many changes of plan...
Not really an accusation. The government ended up with nothing. Babbage kinda complete the design to Diff Eng 2 - but never finished building anything. Clement and Whitworth built big businesses on the back of it.
Whitworth started his own company while working for Clement, effectively becoming a subcontractor.
https://amzn.eu/d/fExZUwr is a good book on the overall project, why it failed and the fun with actually building No. 2
Babbage's machine did not really advance computing, but thanks to it Britain made enormous advances in precision engineering.
Hence calling the computer in Family Fortunes (if it’s up there I’ll give you the money myself) Mr Babbage.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
Plenty of pyramids since the Egyptians - especially in Mexico. They range from Teotihuacan to Tenochtitlan - over sixteen centuries - and they include the biggest pyramid in the world at Cholula - yes, bigger than Giza
There’s something very satisfying about a really good pyramid. Those at Teotihuacan are particularly noomy
In short: you’re talking your usual misinformed nonsense
You've forgotten the Egyptian/Aztec (or possible pre-Aztec) cross-Atlantic crossings.
The Trump ban on federal employee WFH and the hiring freeze may have looked smart on paper but in my little corner of the world it is going to cause a huge amount of damage.
Around 95% of US Patent and Trademark Office staff, including examiners and judicial personnel, work remotely. All are highly skilled, highly qualified and highly coveted. They have all just been told they have to return to the office. The problem is (1) the office is not big enough (it can house 25% of staff max); (2) most staff do not live within commutable distance anyway; and (3) they can al move to other jobs pretty easily.
So, the upshot is that the backlog of examinations is likely to grow very quickly, meaning US companies that want patents are going to have to wait far longer to get them, while disputes about grants will also take much longer to resolve. The impact on smaller businesses looking for investment will be significant and hugely negative.
This whole thing is a Musk wheeze. Move fast and break things is the silicon valley bro approach.
We’re going to find out how much breakage the US can take I guess.
Yes, the septic tank is heading the way of a failed state with all the grant freezes from the NIH, foreign aid, medicaid, redundancies etc.
It will be interesting to see how people cope. It's good to be a safe distance away.
Errr ... plenty of airliners full of bird flu (human-adapted variety) coming to an airport near you ere long?
Yep. This is why all polling about Starmer being shit is utterly irrelevant. How he leads us through the pandemic that is coming will be far more relevant frankly.
Get one's will updated ...
Yeh. Sadly. The Americans are making a total mess of dealing with spreading bird flu. And now Trump and RFK are running the response...
Given my day job, I can confidently say that 99% of all cash transactions are something to do with dodging taxes, drugs, and/or wider criminality.
If you use cash you are on the side of the criminals and tax dodgers as well as making the lives harder for legitimate businesses.
Every week I go to the cash point and take out a fixed amount of cash. It helps me budget during the week. I also get the slip that tells me how much money I have and enter that in a spreadsheet. I have been doing that for more decades than I like to think.
Just go the whole hog and fucking move into Beamish.
I think the cashpoints in the 1820s still used CRTs, and only worked if the rubber band was wound up.
Nah, they were getting really excited about the new steam engines with mechanical processing. Mr Babbage and all that.
That was all TechBroHype. Government invested a fortune and got nothing. The mechanical computing market collapsed for decades.
Clement and then Whitworth made fortunes of delivering bit for machines that were never built. They used the money to build their own businesses at government expense.
The financial enquiry still hasn’t reported - the specific enquiry into the usefulness of the project showed it was a waste of time.
Isn't that being more than a little unfair on Joey Whitworth?
Clement, in particular, optimised his return from the Difference Machine contracts. Rather well.
Whitworth wasn’t far behind.
Do you have any details on that please, as I've not heard of that accusation before. Joseph Whitworth was twelve years younger than Babbage, and twenty-four younger than Clement. He was just thirty when the Difference Engine project was scrapped by the government, so was hardly a senior partner in the relationship. Besides, AIUI he only started working for Clement in 1830, and Clement and Babbage's falling out was the year after.
Given what they were trying to do, and Babbage's need for unprecedented precision, it is unsurprising they had massive difficulties in making the thing. Probably not helped by Babbage's many changes of plan...
Not really an accusation. The government ended up with nothing. Babbage kinda complete the design to Diff Eng 2 - but never finished building anything. Clement and Whitworth built big businesses on the back of it.
Whitworth started his own company while working for Clement, effectively becoming a subcontractor.
https://amzn.eu/d/fExZUwr is a good book on the overall project, why it failed and the fun with actually building No. 2
Babbage's machine did not really advance computing, but thanks to it Britain made enormous advances in precision engineering.
No, she wouldn't make the best Prime Minister. But she is probably the best Prime Minister in the present House of Commons.
That's a bit like saying that syphilis is the best STD to catch.
In that it’s factually untrue. (Chlamydia clearly a preferable STD to catch.)
He said, 'best', not 'most preferable'. So it depends how you define 'best'. (I'd agree that Chlam is 'preferable'.) It's like Harold Shipman being described as the UK's worst serial killer. I'd describe him as the UK's best serial killier. The UK's worst serial killer is one of the presumably numerous people who have killed exactly 2 people. (Someone who has committed one murder is not a serial killer, and someone who has committed no murders is not a killer at all.)
pedantic-betting.com
I think volume is the wrong measure, or at least incomplete. Probably some kind of scoring system needed with judges.
Or, the best serial killers are those we don't know about, I guess (after all, if you're really good at your trade, why would you be caught or - potentially - even detected?).
Actually, I agree. Shipman was successful by volume but was actually quite uninteresting, killing people without much life left anyway and in quite a boring way. No crossbows or calling cards or eccentric themes or really any exoticism whatsoever. If they made a film about him it would be shitter than pyramids.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
The police have the resources of the state available to make their case before courts. Wrongfully accused individuals do not. Even if the police did not have such advantages, if any party lies in any litigation they have a chance of winning because lies are, sadly, quite often believed.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
This is the first polemic against Pyramids I've ever come across. Excellent stuff. Very PB.com.
If there is one thing pyramids are demonstrably not, it is pointless. It's at the top.
But I agree with kinabalu. Solid effort and post of the day.
Unfortunately, it’s ahistorical drivel
But I can't help but admire the typically pb highly specific crossness.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
This is the first polemic against Pyramids I've ever come across. Excellent stuff. Very PB.com.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
Plenty of pyramids since the Egyptians - especially in Mexico. They range from Teotihuacan to Tenochtitlan - over sixteen centuries - and they include the biggest pyramid in the world at Cholula - yes, bigger than Giza
There’s something very satisfying about a really good pyramid. Those at Teotihuacan are particularly noomy
In short: you’re talking your usual misinformed nonsense
You've forgotten the Egyptian/Aztec (or possible pre-Aztec) cross-Atlantic crossings.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
Plenty of pyramids since the Egyptians - especially in Mexico. They range from Teotihuacan to Tenochtitlan - over sixteen centuries - and they include the biggest pyramid in the world at Cholula - yes, bigger than Giza
There’s something very satisfying about a really good pyramid. Those at Teotihuacan are particularly noomy
In short: you’re talking your usual misinformed nonsense
I'm not surprised - my son loved pyramids too when he was a toddler.
Quite the political earthquake in Germany today. Merz working with the AfD to obtain a majority in parliament will make another grand coalition harder for the SPD to accept.
Quite the political earthquake in Germany today. Merz working with the AfD to obtain a majority in parliament will make another grand coalition harder for the SPD to accept.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Given my day job, I can confidently say that 99% of all cash transactions are something to do with dodging taxes, drugs, and/or wider criminality.
If you use cash you are on the side of the criminals and tax dodgers as well as making the lives harder for legitimate businesses.
Every week I go to the cash point and take out a fixed amount of cash. It helps me budget during the week. I also get the slip that tells me how much money I have and enter that in a spreadsheet. I have been doing that for more decades than I like to think.
Just go the whole hog and fucking move into Beamish.
I think the cashpoints in the 1820s still used CRTs, and only worked if the rubber band was wound up.
Nah, they were getting really excited about the new steam engines with mechanical processing. Mr Babbage and all that.
That was all TechBroHype. Government invested a fortune and got nothing. The mechanical computing market collapsed for decades.
Clement and then Whitworth made fortunes of delivering bit for machines that were never built. They used the money to build their own businesses at government expense.
The financial enquiry still hasn’t reported - the specific enquiry into the usefulness of the project showed it was a waste of time.
Isn't that being more than a little unfair on Joey Whitworth?
Clement, in particular, optimised his return from the Difference Machine contracts. Rather well.
Whitworth wasn’t far behind.
Do you have any details on that please, as I've not heard of that accusation before. Joseph Whitworth was twelve years younger than Babbage, and twenty-four younger than Clement. He was just thirty when the Difference Engine project was scrapped by the government, so was hardly a senior partner in the relationship. Besides, AIUI he only started working for Clement in 1830, and Clement and Babbage's falling out was the year after.
Given what they were trying to do, and Babbage's need for unprecedented precision, it is unsurprising they had massive difficulties in making the thing. Probably not helped by Babbage's many changes of plan...
Not really an accusation. The government ended up with nothing. Babbage kinda complete the design to Diff Eng 2 - but never finished building anything. Clement and Whitworth built big businesses on the back of it.
Whitworth started his own company while working for Clement, effectively becoming a subcontractor.
https://amzn.eu/d/fExZUwr is a good book on the overall project, why it failed and the fun with actually building No. 2
Babbage's machine did not really advance computing, but thanks to it Britain made enormous advances in precision engineering.
I'd love this to be true. Is it?
Before Whitworth, virtually every blacksmith had their own standard for nuts and bolts - if they made them at all. Different diameters, pitch and depth on the threads... it as fine if you were building a couple of carts locally, but terrible if you wanted to make thousands of something, or have them repaired in the next town along.
As a young man, Whitworth worked for some of the great machine tool builders - including Clements. Babbage showed the need for precision in screws, nuts and bolts, and Whitworth later developed Maudslay's process to make a perfectly flat surface - a prerequisite for manufacture - and used it to develop standards for threads. This became (I think with some changes...) the Whitworth standard.
The need for precision and standardisation was known about well before Whitworth and Babbage, and the need was probably coming with the steam age meaning machines could go around the country much more easily. But IMV there is a direct connection between Babbage and precision engineering, via Whitworth.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
The Osirans built them.
Any Whovian knows that.
Travellers in an ancient land....
An excuse for this gem:
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Given my day job, I can confidently say that 99% of all cash transactions are something to do with dodging taxes, drugs, and/or wider criminality.
If you use cash you are on the side of the criminals and tax dodgers as well as making the lives harder for legitimate businesses.
Every week I go to the cash point and take out a fixed amount of cash. It helps me budget during the week. I also get the slip that tells me how much money I have and enter that in a spreadsheet. I have been doing that for more decades than I like to think.
Just go the whole hog and fucking move into Beamish.
I think the cashpoints in the 1820s still used CRTs, and only worked if the rubber band was wound up.
Nah, they were getting really excited about the new steam engines with mechanical processing. Mr Babbage and all that.
That was all TechBroHype. Government invested a fortune and got nothing. The mechanical computing market collapsed for decades.
Clement and then Whitworth made fortunes of delivering bit for machines that were never built. They used the money to build their own businesses at government expense.
The financial enquiry still hasn’t reported - the specific enquiry into the usefulness of the project showed it was a waste of time.
Isn't that being more than a little unfair on Joey Whitworth?
Clement, in particular, optimised his return from the Difference Machine contracts. Rather well.
Whitworth wasn’t far behind.
Do you have any details on that please, as I've not heard of that accusation before. Joseph Whitworth was twelve years younger than Babbage, and twenty-four younger than Clement. He was just thirty when the Difference Engine project was scrapped by the government, so was hardly a senior partner in the relationship. Besides, AIUI he only started working for Clement in 1830, and Clement and Babbage's falling out was the year after.
Given what they were trying to do, and Babbage's need for unprecedented precision, it is unsurprising they had massive difficulties in making the thing. Probably not helped by Babbage's many changes of plan...
Not really an accusation. The government ended up with nothing. Babbage kinda complete the design to Diff Eng 2 - but never finished building anything. Clement and Whitworth built big businesses on the back of it.
Whitworth started his own company while working for Clement, effectively becoming a subcontractor.
https://amzn.eu/d/fExZUwr is a good book on the overall project, why it failed and the fun with actually building No. 2
Babbage's machine did not really advance computing, but thanks to it Britain made enormous advances in precision engineering.
I'd love this to be true. Is it?
Given that it launched Clement and Whitworth into the big time - yes, probably.
The government spent more than the cost of a 1st rate battleship on the project.
It was the first project which required massive numbers of complex, identical parts, both accurate and precise (not quite the same thing).
IIRC the bolts and screws for the parts that were made are very early versions of Whitworth’s standardised threads.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
Given my day job, I can confidently say that 99% of all cash transactions are something to do with dodging taxes, drugs, and/or wider criminality.
If you use cash you are on the side of the criminals and tax dodgers as well as making the lives harder for legitimate businesses.
Every week I go to the cash point and take out a fixed amount of cash. It helps me budget during the week. I also get the slip that tells me how much money I have and enter that in a spreadsheet. I have been doing that for more decades than I like to think.
Just go the whole hog and fucking move into Beamish.
I think the cashpoints in the 1820s still used CRTs, and only worked if the rubber band was wound up.
Nah, they were getting really excited about the new steam engines with mechanical processing. Mr Babbage and all that.
That was all TechBroHype. Government invested a fortune and got nothing. The mechanical computing market collapsed for decades.
Clement and then Whitworth made fortunes of delivering bit for machines that were never built. They used the money to build their own businesses at government expense.
The financial enquiry still hasn’t reported - the specific enquiry into the usefulness of the project showed it was a waste of time.
Isn't that being more than a little unfair on Joey Whitworth?
Clement, in particular, optimised his return from the Difference Machine contracts. Rather well.
Whitworth wasn’t far behind.
Do you have any details on that please, as I've not heard of that accusation before. Joseph Whitworth was twelve years younger than Babbage, and twenty-four younger than Clement. He was just thirty when the Difference Engine project was scrapped by the government, so was hardly a senior partner in the relationship. Besides, AIUI he only started working for Clement in 1830, and Clement and Babbage's falling out was the year after.
Given what they were trying to do, and Babbage's need for unprecedented precision, it is unsurprising they had massive difficulties in making the thing. Probably not helped by Babbage's many changes of plan...
Not really an accusation. The government ended up with nothing. Babbage kinda complete the design to Diff Eng 2 - but never finished building anything. Clement and Whitworth built big businesses on the back of it.
Whitworth started his own company while working for Clement, effectively becoming a subcontractor.
https://amzn.eu/d/fExZUwr is a good book on the overall project, why it failed and the fun with actually building No. 2
Babbage's machine did not really advance computing, but thanks to it Britain made enormous advances in precision engineering.
I'd love this to be true. Is it?
Before Whitworth, virtually every blacksmith had their own standard for nuts and bolts - if they made them at all. Different diameters, pitch and depth on the threads... it as fine if you were building a couple of carts locally, but terrible if you wanted to make thousands of something, or have them repaired in the next town along.
As a young man, Whitworth worked for some of the great machine tool builders - including Clements. Babbage showed the need for precision in screws, nuts and bolts, and Whitworth later developed Maudslay's process to make a perfectly flat surface - a prerequisite for manufacture - and used it to develop standards for threads. This became (I think with some changes...) the Whitworth standard.
The need for precision and standardisation was known about well before Whitworth and Babbage, and the need was probably coming with the steam age meaning machines could go around the country much more easily. But IMV there is a direct connection between Babbage and precision engineering, via Whitworth.
Not a coincidence that the Crystal Palace used Whitworth screw threads, as recently discovered.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Although they would have been dead and could not have appealed. Another bonus - extend the death penalty to all crime and there will be no more (discovered) wrongful convictions!
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
The Osirans built them.
Any Whovian knows that.
Travellers in an ancient land....
An excuse for this gem:
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Cast a line with the right fly and someone will bite ......
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
This is the first polemic against Pyramids I've ever come across. Excellent stuff. Very PB.com.
If there is one thing pyramids are demonstrably not, it is pointless. It's at the top.
But I agree with kinabalu. Solid effort and post of the day.
Queen Vicky had a nicely finished pyramid built at Balmoral.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Are you for or against assisted dying?
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
No, she wouldn't make the best Prime Minister. But she is probably the best Prime Minister in the present House of Commons.
That's a bit like saying that syphilis is the best STD to catch.
In that it’s factually untrue. (Chlamydia clearly a preferable STD to catch.)
He said, 'best', not 'most preferable'. So it depends how you define 'best'. (I'd agree that Chlam is 'preferable'.) It's like Harold Shipman being described as the UK's worst serial killer. I'd describe him as the UK's best serial killier. The UK's worst serial killer is one of the presumably numerous people who have killed exactly 2 people. (Someone who has committed one murder is not a serial killer, and someone who has committed no murders is not a killer at all.)
pedantic-betting.com
I think volume is the wrong measure, or at least incomplete. Probably some kind of scoring system needed with judges.
Or, the best serial killers are those we don't know about, I guess (after all, if you're really good at your trade, why would you be caught or - potentially - even detected?).
Actually, I agree. Shipman was successful by volume but was actually quite uninteresting, killing people without much life left anyway and in quite a boring way. No crossbows or calling cards or eccentric themes or really any exoticism whatsoever. If they made a film about him it would be shitter than pyramids.
WARNOCK: You have compared the CDC's work to Nazi death camps. You have compared it to sexual abusers in the Catholic Church. Do you stand by those statements?
RFK Jr: I don't believe that I ever compared the CDC to Nazi death camps
Given my day job, I can confidently say that 99% of all cash transactions are something to do with dodging taxes, drugs, and/or wider criminality.
If you use cash you are on the side of the criminals and tax dodgers as well as making the lives harder for legitimate businesses.
Every week I go to the cash point and take out a fixed amount of cash. It helps me budget during the week. I also get the slip that tells me how much money I have and enter that in a spreadsheet. I have been doing that for more decades than I like to think.
Just go the whole hog and fucking move into Beamish.
I think the cashpoints in the 1820s still used CRTs, and only worked if the rubber band was wound up.
Nah, they were getting really excited about the new steam engines with mechanical processing. Mr Babbage and all that.
That was all TechBroHype. Government invested a fortune and got nothing. The mechanical computing market collapsed for decades.
Clement and then Whitworth made fortunes of delivering bit for machines that were never built. They used the money to build their own businesses at government expense.
The financial enquiry still hasn’t reported - the specific enquiry into the usefulness of the project showed it was a waste of time.
Isn't that being more than a little unfair on Joey Whitworth?
Clement, in particular, optimised his return from the Difference Machine contracts. Rather well.
Whitworth wasn’t far behind.
Do you have any details on that please, as I've not heard of that accusation before. Joseph Whitworth was twelve years younger than Babbage, and twenty-four younger than Clement. He was just thirty when the Difference Engine project was scrapped by the government, so was hardly a senior partner in the relationship. Besides, AIUI he only started working for Clement in 1830, and Clement and Babbage's falling out was the year after.
Given what they were trying to do, and Babbage's need for unprecedented precision, it is unsurprising they had massive difficulties in making the thing. Probably not helped by Babbage's many changes of plan...
Not really an accusation. The government ended up with nothing. Babbage kinda complete the design to Diff Eng 2 - but never finished building anything. Clement and Whitworth built big businesses on the back of it.
Whitworth started his own company while working for Clement, effectively becoming a subcontractor.
https://amzn.eu/d/fExZUwr is a good book on the overall project, why it failed and the fun with actually building No. 2
Babbage's machine did not really advance computing, but thanks to it Britain made enormous advances in precision engineering.
I'd love this to be true. Is it?
Before Whitworth, virtually every blacksmith had their own standard for nuts and bolts - if they made them at all. Different diameters, pitch and depth on the threads... it as fine if you were building a couple of carts locally, but terrible if you wanted to make thousands of something, or have them repaired in the next town along.
As a young man, Whitworth worked for some of the great machine tool builders - including Clements. Babbage showed the need for precision in screws, nuts and bolts, and Whitworth later developed Maudslay's process to make a perfectly flat surface - a prerequisite for manufacture - and used it to develop standards for threads. This became (I think with some changes...) the Whitworth standard.
The need for precision and standardisation was known about well before Whitworth and Babbage, and the need was probably coming with the steam age meaning machines could go around the country much more easily. But IMV there is a direct connection between Babbage and precision engineering, via Whitworth.
Ah yes - Whitworth has been mentioned before here (perhaps by you, but I think also by others). I guess I hope that the Swiss come up with a clockwork AI
Edit: As a Brit I want the UK to come up with great new tech, and machines... But a clockwork AI would fail to scale so much earlier than any other possibility. So let the Swiss baffle us all!
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Are you for or against assisted dying?
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
I don't understand the relevance of your question to the discussion.
Mistakes are not the same as lies. People make mistakes all the time, and people die as a result of those mistakes; when driving, for example. And we -as a society- accept that people get things wrong from time to time.
Lies, though, are a teensy weency bit different. That's deliberately driving your car into someone, rather than there being a momentary lapse of concentration.
Given my day job, I can confidently say that 99% of all cash transactions are something to do with dodging taxes, drugs, and/or wider criminality.
If you use cash you are on the side of the criminals and tax dodgers as well as making the lives harder for legitimate businesses.
Every week I go to the cash point and take out a fixed amount of cash. It helps me budget during the week. I also get the slip that tells me how much money I have and enter that in a spreadsheet. I have been doing that for more decades than I like to think.
Just go the whole hog and fucking move into Beamish.
I think the cashpoints in the 1820s still used CRTs, and only worked if the rubber band was wound up.
Nah, they were getting really excited about the new steam engines with mechanical processing. Mr Babbage and all that.
That was all TechBroHype. Government invested a fortune and got nothing. The mechanical computing market collapsed for decades.
Clement and then Whitworth made fortunes of delivering bit for machines that were never built. They used the money to build their own businesses at government expense.
The financial enquiry still hasn’t reported - the specific enquiry into the usefulness of the project showed it was a waste of time.
Isn't that being more than a little unfair on Joey Whitworth?
Clement, in particular, optimised his return from the Difference Machine contracts. Rather well.
Whitworth wasn’t far behind.
Do you have any details on that please, as I've not heard of that accusation before. Joseph Whitworth was twelve years younger than Babbage, and twenty-four younger than Clement. He was just thirty when the Difference Engine project was scrapped by the government, so was hardly a senior partner in the relationship. Besides, AIUI he only started working for Clement in 1830, and Clement and Babbage's falling out was the year after.
Given what they were trying to do, and Babbage's need for unprecedented precision, it is unsurprising they had massive difficulties in making the thing. Probably not helped by Babbage's many changes of plan...
Not really an accusation. The government ended up with nothing. Babbage kinda complete the design to Diff Eng 2 - but never finished building anything. Clement and Whitworth built big businesses on the back of it.
Whitworth started his own company while working for Clement, effectively becoming a subcontractor.
https://amzn.eu/d/fExZUwr is a good book on the overall project, why it failed and the fun with actually building No. 2
AIUI Clement had a big business (and had won an award...) before he got involved with Babbage. And Whitworth did not start his business until May 1833 - after he had left Clements' employ, and two years after Clements and Babbage had fallen out (1)
I know Babbage is seen as being a great man, and a pioneer in computers. But that does not mean that his failures have to be attributed to everyone around him. Perhaps there were no villains, just people trying to do a very difficult task?
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Although they would have been dead and could not have appealed. Another bonus - extend the death penalty to all crime and there will be no more (discovered) wrongful convictions!
They were discovered when we did have the death penalty ...
WARNOCK: You have compared the CDC's work to Nazi death camps. You have compared it to sexual abusers in the Catholic Church. Do you stand by those statements?
RFK Jr: I don't believe that I ever compared the CDC to Nazi death camps
It is worth watching, because RFK's defence is that he wasn't comparing the CDC to Nazi death camps, but the giving of vaccines to children to Nazi death camps.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Are you for or against assisted dying?
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
I don't understand the relevance of your question to the discussion.
Mistakes are not the same as lies. People make mistakes all the time, and people die as a result of those mistakes; when driving, for example. And we -as a society- accept that people get things wrong from time to time.
Lies, though, are a teensy weency bit different. That's deliberately driving your car into someone, rather than there being a momentary lapse of concentration.
You are arguing that adding the power of life and death to the mix increases the likelihood of institutional lying. I'm just pointing out another example where we are moving towards being more tolerant of this risk.
In any case perjury is an offence just as drink driving is an offence, and deliberately driving your car into someone is (attempted) murder.
Given my day job, I can confidently say that 99% of all cash transactions are something to do with dodging taxes, drugs, and/or wider criminality.
If you use cash you are on the side of the criminals and tax dodgers as well as making the lives harder for legitimate businesses.
Every week I go to the cash point and take out a fixed amount of cash. It helps me budget during the week. I also get the slip that tells me how much money I have and enter that in a spreadsheet. I have been doing that for more decades than I like to think.
Just go the whole hog and fucking move into Beamish.
I think the cashpoints in the 1820s still used CRTs, and only worked if the rubber band was wound up.
Nah, they were getting really excited about the new steam engines with mechanical processing. Mr Babbage and all that.
That was all TechBroHype. Government invested a fortune and got nothing. The mechanical computing market collapsed for decades.
Clement and then Whitworth made fortunes of delivering bit for machines that were never built. They used the money to build their own businesses at government expense.
The financial enquiry still hasn’t reported - the specific enquiry into the usefulness of the project showed it was a waste of time.
Isn't that being more than a little unfair on Joey Whitworth?
Clement, in particular, optimised his return from the Difference Machine contracts. Rather well.
Whitworth wasn’t far behind.
Do you have any details on that please, as I've not heard of that accusation before. Joseph Whitworth was twelve years younger than Babbage, and twenty-four younger than Clement. He was just thirty when the Difference Engine project was scrapped by the government, so was hardly a senior partner in the relationship. Besides, AIUI he only started working for Clement in 1830, and Clement and Babbage's falling out was the year after.
Given what they were trying to do, and Babbage's need for unprecedented precision, it is unsurprising they had massive difficulties in making the thing. Probably not helped by Babbage's many changes of plan...
Not really an accusation. The government ended up with nothing. Babbage kinda complete the design to Diff Eng 2 - but never finished building anything. Clement and Whitworth built big businesses on the back of it.
Whitworth started his own company while working for Clement, effectively becoming a subcontractor.
https://amzn.eu/d/fExZUwr is a good book on the overall project, why it failed and the fun with actually building No. 2
AIUI Clement had a big business (and had won an award...) before he got involved with Babbage. And Whitworth did not start his business until May 1833 - after he had left Clements' employ, and two years after Clements and Babbage had fallen out (1)
I know Babbage is seen as being a great man, and a pioneer in computers. But that does not mean that his failures have to be attributed to everyone around him. Perhaps there were no villains, just people trying to do a very difficult task?
Babbage was 100% the cause of his own failure. He never completed any of the *designs* for his machines. The closest was No. 2 - when the project was long dead. And even that was far from complete.
Something that can cause confusion is that, in that time period, a craftsman owned his own tools. And often made them. So by the time Whitworth left Clement, he had a number of machine tools (along with piles of regular tools) he had built himself, and employed a number of “hands” to help him work.
Durham are actually late to the story here I think all the other NE universities have announced this years cuts..
I’m quoting 200 admin from the article so I wouldn’t know. You may well be right. The Chronics journalism is more focussed on click bait and showbiz now. They seem to be making money now as well, the group they’re part of.
Regarding our conversation earlier on infrastructure, I don't think that windmills can really be considered infrastructure. They are more a cause of infrastructure. When you build a wind power station you must build significant infrastructure in terms of grid capacity to cope with the power that the windmills will (at times) produce. In a way that would not be necessary for other types of power. So I don't think "speeding offshore wind through planning" os necessarily a good thing. Because it will probably cause infrastructure issues rather than resolve them.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Are you for or against assisted dying?
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
I don't understand the relevance of your question to the discussion.
Mistakes are not the same as lies. People make mistakes all the time, and people die as a result of those mistakes; when driving, for example. And we -as a society- accept that people get things wrong from time to time.
Lies, though, are a teensy weency bit different. That's deliberately driving your car into someone, rather than there being a momentary lapse of concentration.
You are arguing that adding the power of life and death to the mix increases the likelihood of institutional lying. I'm just pointing out another example where we are moving towards being more tolerant of this risk.
In any case perjury is an offence just as drink driving is an offence, and deliberately driving your car into someone is (attempted) murder.
Lying is much more insidious than just perjury: for example not sharing information to the defence that you are duty bound to do so.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
Regarding our conversation earlier on infrastructure, I don't think that windmills can really be considered infrastructure. They are more a cause of infrastructure. When you build a wind power station you must build significant infrastructure in terms of grid capacity to cope with the power that the windmills will (at times) produce. In a way that would not be necessary for other types of power. So I don't think "speeding offshore wind through planning" os necessarily a good thing. Because it will probably cause infrastructure issues rather than resolve them.
Offshore is a bit different to onshore, because load factors are typically much higher. Some offshore wind farms have load factors better than our less reliable nuclear plants for example.
Regarding our conversation earlier on infrastructure, I don't think that windmills can really be considered infrastructure. They are more a cause of infrastructure. When you build a wind power station you must build significant infrastructure in terms of grid capacity to cope with the power that the windmills will (at times) produce. In a way that would not be necessary for other types of power. So I don't think "speeding offshore wind through planning" os necessarily a good thing. Because it will probably cause infrastructure issues rather than resolve them.
But neither can, say, nukes be considered infrastructure. They are more a cause of infrastructure. When you build a nuke you must build significant infrastructure in terms of heavy duty transmission routes and grid capacity to cope with the power that the plants will (at times) produce. And disposal sites, which is not necessary for other types of power. So I don't think "speeding nukes through planning" os necessarily a good thing. Because it will probably cause infrastructure issues rather than resolve them.
Durham are actually late to the story here I think all the other NE universities have announced this years cuts..
I’m quoting 200 admin from the article so I wouldn’t know. You may well be right. The Chronics journalism is more focussed on click bait and showbiz now. They seem to be making money now as well, the group they’re part of.
Newcastle announced job cuts last week.
Don’t know about Northumberland.
Northumbria started early this year announcing course closures in November (but I suspect more cuts may be coming).
Sunderland had a story about gagging staff from commenting on job cuts also earlier this month
And Teesside made its announcement in early December
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Are you for or against assisted dying?
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
I don't understand the relevance of your question to the discussion.
Mistakes are not the same as lies. People make mistakes all the time, and people die as a result of those mistakes; when driving, for example. And we -as a society- accept that people get things wrong from time to time.
Lies, though, are a teensy weency bit different. That's deliberately driving your car into someone, rather than there being a momentary lapse of concentration.
You are arguing that adding the power of life and death to the mix increases the likelihood of institutional lying. I'm just pointing out another example where we are moving towards being more tolerant of this risk.
In any case perjury is an offence just as drink driving is an offence, and deliberately driving your car into someone is (attempted) murder.
Lying is much more insidious than just perjury: for example not sharing information to the defence that you are duty bound to do so.
The police are not interested in finding the truth. As soon as they get someone in the frame they are looking for evidence to confirm their opinions. Not only do they ignore conflicting evidence they cover it up, and worst of all cease to investigate anyone else. Check out the Jill Dando story. They got Barry George in the frame using an agent provocateur. After he was finally acquitted the police to my knowledge have not attempted to look for anyone else.
I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but there was a Special Election in the Iowa State Senate yesterday where the Dems flipped a seat, that had gone 60:40 for Trump in November.
This is interesting because Elise Stefanik's House Seat was 58:42 in November, and (once she is confirmed as US Ambassador the UN) there will be a Special Election in her upstate New York district.
If the Democrats flip it, then the House of Representatives will be 218 - 1 - 216 (with the 1 being Victoria Spartz).
Now, I don't believe that Victoria Spartz would vote for a Democrat Speaker, but her independence puts the House of Representatives just a single heart attack or auto erotic asphyxiation from being a tie.
He's awful! But like much that surrounds this Labour government it's a bit better than what went before. The Labour front bench bang on about this and that failure... and sadly they're right.
I think the covid epidemic was the start of this - Covid and Brexit - too much to do and so do nothing. And do nothing. Endlessly.
A light touch in the tiller is one thing, but sailing into whatever waters you drift is another.
I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but there was a Special Election in the Iowa State Senate yesterday where the Dems flipped a seat, that had gone 60:40 for Trump in November.
This is interesting because Elise Stefanik's House Seat was 58:42 in November, and (once she is confirmed as US Ambassador the UN) there will be a Special Election in her upstate New York district.
If the Democrats flip it, then the House of Representatives will be 218 - 1 - 216 (with the 1 being Victoria Spartz).
Now, I don't believe that Victoria Spartz would vote for a Democrat Speaker, but her independence puts the House of Representatives just a single heart attack or auto erotic asphyxiation from being a tie.
Is this a long winded way of saying we are past Peak Trump?
My Mum has been buying me a local sirloin steak each week from the market
It's bred, born, raised, slaughtered, butchered, packaged and sold within ten miles of where I cook and eat it
It tastes better than the Waitrose No.1 sirloin and the Wagyu sirloin, and it's cheaper
I find beef by far the most variable of meats, from the most tasteless gunk to absolutely delicious beefy loveliness.
There’s certainly a quality range in lamb, pork, chicken and duck but you can still get a satisfyingly chickeny flavour from a cheapo bird that never saw the outdoors and a tasty shepherds pie from a shoulder of mutton down the Deptford halal butchers. Whereas if you buy cheap beef you might as well just eat a McDonald’s burger.
It works well because we can all see he’s lying in the authentic Mandelsonian baroque, but the MAGA Americans will believe it. Perfect squaring of the circle by Starmer.
The Trump ban on federal employee WFH and the hiring freeze may have looked smart on paper but in my little corner of the world it is going to cause a huge amount of damage.
Around 95% of US Patent and Trademark Office staff, including examiners and judicial personnel, work remotely. All are highly skilled, highly qualified and highly coveted. They have all just been told they have to return to the office. The problem is (1) the office is not big enough (it can house 25% of staff max); (2) most staff do not live within commutable distance anyway; and (3) they can al move to other jobs pretty easily.
So, the upshot is that the backlog of examinations is likely to grow very quickly, meaning US companies that want patents are going to have to wait far longer to get them, while disputes about grants will also take much longer to resolve. The impact on smaller businesses looking for investment will be significant and hugely negative.
Upper management seem to think that "return to the office" means that the slackers will be forced out, but in reality you will simply lose a lot of good people who can find better work and conditions.
He's awful! But like much that surrounds this Labour government it's a bit better than what went before. The Labour front bench bang on about this and that failure... and sadly they're right.
I think the covid epidemic was the start of this - Covid and Brexit - too much to do and so do nothing. And do nothing. Endlessly.
A light touch in the tiller is one thing, but sailing into whatever waters you drift is another.
A very particular kind of awful is precisely what is needed for that role!
Breaking - The White House Office of Management and Budget has rescinded the federal aid freeze, according to a memo obtained by CNN from a Trump administration official.
“OMB Memorandum M-25-13 is rescinded. If you have questions about implementing the President’s Executive Orders, please contact your agency General Counsel,” the memo reads.
I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but there was a Special Election in the Iowa State Senate yesterday where the Dems flipped a seat, that had gone 60:40 for Trump in November.
This is interesting because Elise Stefanik's House Seat was 58:42 in November, and (once she is confirmed as US Ambassador the UN) there will be a Special Election in her upstate New York district.
If the Democrats flip it, then the House of Representatives will be 218 - 1 - 216 (with the 1 being Victoria Spartz).
Now, I don't believe that Victoria Spartz would vote for a Democrat Speaker, but her independence puts the House of Representatives just a single heart attack or auto erotic asphyxiation from being a tie.
Is this a long winded way of saying we are past Peak Trump?
No, not at all.
However, were the the US House of Representatives to flip, then President Trump would find his actions significantly constrained.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
No, she wouldn't make the best Prime Minister. But she is probably the best Prime Minister in the present House of Commons.
That's a bit like saying that syphilis is the best STD to catch.
In that it’s factually untrue. (Chlamydia clearly a preferable STD to catch.)
He said, 'best', not 'most preferable'. So it depends how you define 'best'. (I'd agree that Chlam is 'preferable'.) It's like Harold Shipman being described as the UK's worst serial killer. I'd describe him as the UK's best serial killier. The UK's worst serial killer is one of the presumably numerous people who have killed exactly 2 people. (Someone who has committed one murder is not a serial killer, and someone who has committed no murders is not a killer at all.)
I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but there was a Special Election in the Iowa State Senate yesterday where the Dems flipped a seat, that had gone 60:40 for Trump in November.
This is interesting because Elise Stefanik's House Seat was 58:42 in November, and (once she is confirmed as US Ambassador the UN) there will be a Special Election in her upstate New York district.
If the Democrats flip it, then the House of Representatives will be 218 - 1 - 216 (with the 1 being Victoria Spartz).
Now, I don't believe that Victoria Spartz would vote for a Democrat Speaker, but her independence puts the House of Representatives just a single heart attack or auto erotic asphyxiation from being a tie.
Is this a long winded way of saying we are past Peak Trump?
No, she wouldn't make the best Prime Minister. But she is probably the best Prime Minister in the present House of Commons.
That's a bit like saying that syphilis is the best STD to catch.
In that it’s factually untrue. (Chlamydia clearly a preferable STD to catch.)
He said, 'best', not 'most preferable'. So it depends how you define 'best'. (I'd agree that Chlam is 'preferable'.) It's like Harold Shipman being described as the UK's worst serial killer. I'd describe him as the UK's best serial killier. The UK's worst serial killer is one of the presumably numerous people who have killed exactly 2 people. (Someone who has committed one murder is not a serial killer, and someone who has committed no murders is not a killer at all.)
pedantic-betting.com
You actually have to kill 3 to be a serial killer
Kellogs give you a 2 for 3 bonus though, so you can be a cereal killer boosted by the sunshine flakes.
Tracking Legal Challenges to Trump's Executive Orders
Issue, Who's Suing, Order Status
- Ending birthright citizenship, Immigrants' rights advocates, multiple states - blocked - Making it easier to fire federal employees, The National Treasury Employees Union, ongoing - Creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Nonprofit groups, National Security Counselors, Ongoing
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Are you for or against assisted dying?
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
I don't understand the relevance of your question to the discussion.
Mistakes are not the same as lies. People make mistakes all the time, and people die as a result of those mistakes; when driving, for example. And we -as a society- accept that people get things wrong from time to time.
Lies, though, are a teensy weency bit different. That's deliberately driving your car into someone, rather than there being a momentary lapse of concentration.
You are arguing that adding the power of life and death to the mix increases the likelihood of institutional lying. I'm just pointing out another example where we are moving towards being more tolerant of this risk.
In any case perjury is an offence just as drink driving is an offence, and deliberately driving your car into someone is (attempted) murder.
Lying is much more insidious than just perjury: for example not sharing information to the defence that you are duty bound to do so.
The police are not interested in finding the truth. As soon as they get someone in the frame they are looking for evidence to confirm their opinions. Not only do they ignore conflicting evidence they cover it up, and worst of all cease to investigate anyone else. Check out the Jill Dando story. They got Barry George in the frame using an agent provocateur. After he was finally acquitted the police to my knowledge have not attempted to look for anyone else.
Sadly, this all very much plays into human nature. We often want an easy job rather than a hard job; we can all get tunnel vision; and it's often easier to plough on knowing you are wrong, than to admit to being wrong.
It is just with certain professions, like medicine or police, the effects of these flaws in human nature can be severe for other people.
It works well because we can all see he’s lying in the authentic Mandelsonian baroque, but the MAGA Americans will believe it. Perfect squaring of the circle by Starmer.
We're sending the Prince of Darkness to treat with the Antichrist. It's a perfect fit.
No, she wouldn't make the best Prime Minister. But she is probably the best Prime Minister in the present House of Commons.
That's a bit like saying that syphilis is the best STD to catch.
In that it’s factually untrue. (Chlamydia clearly a preferable STD to catch.)
He said, 'best', not 'most preferable'. So it depends how you define 'best'. (I'd agree that Chlam is 'preferable'.) It's like Harold Shipman being described as the UK's worst serial killer. I'd describe him as the UK's best serial killier. The UK's worst serial killer is one of the presumably numerous people who have killed exactly 2 people. (Someone who has committed one murder is not a serial killer, and someone who has committed no murders is not a killer at all.)
pedantic-betting.com
I think volume is the wrong measure, or at least incomplete. Probably some kind of scoring system needed with judges.
Or, the best serial killers are those we don't know about, I guess (after all, if you're really good at your trade, why would you be caught or - potentially - even detected?).
Actually, I agree. Shipman was successful by volume but was actually quite uninteresting, killing people without much life left anyway and in quite a boring way. No crossbows or calling cards or eccentric themes or really any exoticism whatsoever. If they made a film about him it would be shitter than pyramids.
No, she wouldn't make the best Prime Minister. But she is probably the best Prime Minister in the present House of Commons.
That's a bit like saying that syphilis is the best STD to catch.
In that it’s factually untrue. (Chlamydia clearly a preferable STD to catch.)
He said, 'best', not 'most preferable'. So it depends how you define 'best'. (I'd agree that Chlam is 'preferable'.) It's like Harold Shipman being described as the UK's worst serial killer. I'd describe him as the UK's best serial killier. The UK's worst serial killer is one of the presumably numerous people who have killed exactly 2 people. (Someone who has committed one murder is not a serial killer, and someone who has committed no murders is not a killer at all.)
pedantic-betting.com
I think volume is the wrong measure, or at least incomplete. Probably some kind of scoring system needed with judges.
Or, the best serial killers are those we don't know about, I guess (after all, if you're really good at your trade, why would you be caught or - potentially - even detected?).
Actually, I agree. Shipman was successful by volume but was actually quite uninteresting, killing people without much life left anyway and in quite a boring way. No crossbows or calling cards or eccentric themes or really any exoticism whatsoever. If they made a film about him it would be shitter than pyramids.
It works well because we can all see he’s lying in the authentic Mandelsonian baroque, but the MAGA Americans will believe it. Perfect squaring of the circle by Starmer.
We're sending the Prince of Darkness to treat with the Antichrist. It's a perfect fit.
He can bond with the Donald over his history of problems with property loans.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
It's not the argument why you abolish/keep abolishing it - we don't have it for various reasons I listed before - plus others such as moral conviction and chance of a miscarriage of justice.
Point is even if you discard those, it seems fairly pointless for what it would achieve here even if you erase moral objections. It wouldn't make anyone safer, as a punishment its merits compared to life sentences are debatable, and any cost savings would be miniscule and possibly swallowed by the legal wrangling you'd give rise to. Which could also be bad for victims given the likelihood of high profile appeals that would drag the case into court again.
Nor is it about hectoring. Plus, not only that but would then find it more difficult to speak out against death sentences passed abroad when need to - say a British national or a prisoner with our support for whatever reason.
I saw Conclave last night, and I think @Leon was completely wrong.
In particular his contention that in the last third there was a completely ridiculous plot twist that strained at the bounds of credibility was completely inaccurate.
The reality is that the entire thing was utterly unbelievable. I mean, I could check off each of the ways it was silly, but I shan't.
Because, you know what?
(a) It was fun, with some genuinely great acting. (John Lithgow was amazing, as was the actor who played Leon, who vaped away.)
and
(b) The cinematography was INSANE. It was the best looking movie I have seen for a decade.
So, look past the silly and absurd plot, and enjoy the spectacle.
No, she wouldn't make the best Prime Minister. But she is probably the best Prime Minister in the present House of Commons.
That's a bit like saying that syphilis is the best STD to catch.
In that it’s factually untrue. (Chlamydia clearly a preferable STD to catch.)
He said, 'best', not 'most preferable'. So it depends how you define 'best'. (I'd agree that Chlam is 'preferable'.) It's like Harold Shipman being described as the UK's worst serial killer. I'd describe him as the UK's best serial killier. The UK's worst serial killer is one of the presumably numerous people who have killed exactly 2 people. (Someone who has committed one murder is not a serial killer, and someone who has committed no murders is not a killer at all.)
pedantic-betting.com
You actually have to kill 3 to be a serial killer
I think the requirement should be the same as for fighter aces in the First World War: i.e. five confirmed kills.
Breaking - The White House Office of Management and Budget has rescinded the federal aid freeze, according to a memo obtained by CNN from a Trump administration official.
“OMB Memorandum M-25-13 is rescinded. If you have questions about implementing the President’s Executive Orders, please contact your agency General Counsel,” the memo reads.
I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but there was a Special Election in the Iowa State Senate yesterday where the Dems flipped a seat, that had gone 60:40 for Trump in November.
This is interesting because Elise Stefanik's House Seat was 58:42 in November, and (once she is confirmed as US Ambassador the UN) there will be a Special Election in her upstate New York district.
If the Democrats flip it, then the House of Representatives will be 218 - 1 - 216 (with the 1 being Victoria Spartz).
Now, I don't believe that Victoria Spartz would vote for a Democrat Speaker, but her independence puts the House of Representatives just a single heart attack or auto erotic asphyxiation from being a tie.
Is this a long winded way of saying we are past Peak Trump?
No, not at all.
However, were the the US House of Representatives to flip, then President Trump would find his actions significantly constrained.
I saw Conclave last night, and I think @Leon was completely wrong.
And his contention that in the last third there was a completely ridiculous plot twist that strained at the bounds of credibility was completely inaccurate.
The reality is that the entire thing was utterly unbelievable. I mean, I could check off each of the ways it was silly, but I shan't.
Because, you know what?
(a) It was fun, with some genuinely great acting. (John Lithgow was amazing, as was the actor who played Leon, who vaped away.)
and
(b) The cinematography was INSANE. It was the best looking movie I have seen for a decade.
So, look past the silly and absurd plot, and enjoy the spectacle.
Incidentally, I just came across this little snippet about mechanisation in the USA. From 170 years ago:
"1853 Whitworth was appointed a member of the Royal Commission to the New York Industrial Exhibition. George Wallis was another member. He subsequently wrote a special report which embodied the results of observations made in the course of a journey through the industrial districts of the United States. He noted that 'The labouring classes are comparatively few in number; but this is counterbalanced by, and indeed may be regarded as one of the chief causes of the eagerness with which they call in the aid of machinery in almost every department of industry. . . . It is this condition of the labour market, and this eager resort to machinery, where it can be applied, to which, under the guidance of superior education and intelligence, the remarkable prosperity of the United States is mainly due'."
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Are you for or against assisted dying?
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
I don't understand the relevance of your question to the discussion.
Mistakes are not the same as lies. People make mistakes all the time, and people die as a result of those mistakes; when driving, for example. And we -as a society- accept that people get things wrong from time to time.
Lies, though, are a teensy weency bit different. That's deliberately driving your car into someone, rather than there being a momentary lapse of concentration.
You are arguing that adding the power of life and death to the mix increases the likelihood of institutional lying. I'm just pointing out another example where we are moving towards being more tolerant of this risk.
In any case perjury is an offence just as drink driving is an offence, and deliberately driving your car into someone is (attempted) murder.
Lying is much more insidious than just perjury: for example not sharing information to the defence that you are duty bound to do so.
The police are not interested in finding the truth. As soon as they get someone in the frame they are looking for evidence to confirm their opinions. Not only do they ignore conflicting evidence they cover it up, and worst of all cease to investigate anyone else. Check out the Jill Dando story. They got Barry George in the frame using an agent provocateur. After he was finally acquitted the police to my knowledge have not attempted to look for anyone else.
I have no idea if they have continued enquiries in the Jill Dando case, and I don't know who killed Jill Dando, but it is not possible to exclude the chance that the ultimately acquitted defendant was guilty. When looking at probabilities account has to be taken of the evidence, including the ultimately excluded forensic evidence, and having regard to the fact that at no point did the defendant give evidence.
Comments
Labour 283
Reform 118
Con 113
Lib 77
SNP 18
Gre 7
Plaid 4
Other 12
NI 18
Lab-lib coalition, or even Lab minority would work.
However, I have his School Certificate and HIghers certificate.
Just been reading a history of the Clifton to Hotwells railway* (about 140m long - but mostly straight up) including its use as a secure wartime BBC engineering control centre. Apparently there was a foulup with the recordings and a Prof of Welsh who was out with the services in Egypt was very surprised to hear a discussion of sheep or some other suitably Cymric topic in that language over the Arabic channel of the BBC World Service ...
*Edit: in Bristol, the site being between I.K. Brunel's posthumous suspension bridge and very much not posthumous swing bridge.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
France considering sending troops to Greenland.
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-fm-jean-noel-barrot-floats-sending-troops-to-greenland-denmark/
(To my eye, it would make sense to ramp it up as an arctic training region for European forces.)
There’s something very satisfying about a really good pyramid. Those at Teotihuacan are particularly noomy
In short: you’re talking your usual misinformed nonsense
It's at the top.
But I agree with kinabalu. Solid effort and post of the day.
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/durham-university-job-cuts-plans-30879624
Penarth to standby imho.
Durham are actually late to the story here I think all the other NE universities have announced this years cuts..
Any Whovian knows that.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
As a young man, Whitworth worked for some of the great machine tool builders - including Clements. Babbage showed the need for precision in screws, nuts and bolts, and Whitworth later developed Maudslay's process to make a perfectly flat surface - a prerequisite for manufacture - and used it to develop standards for threads. This became (I think with some changes...) the Whitworth standard.
The need for precision and standardisation was known about well before Whitworth and Babbage, and the need was probably coming with the steam age meaning machines could go around the country much more easily. But IMV there is a direct connection between Babbage and precision engineering, via Whitworth.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The government spent more than the cost of a 1st rate battleship on the project.
It was the first project which required massive numbers of complex, identical parts, both accurate and precise (not quite the same thing).
IIRC the bolts and screws for the parts that were made are very early versions of Whitworth’s standardised threads.
But perhaps we had better draw a veil over that one.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
Bit smaller in scale though worth a visit.
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306943/
RFK Jr: I don't believe that I ever compared the CDC to Nazi death camps
WARNOCK: I have a transcript
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1884661971691213146
and
🚨 Trump’s White House OMB rescinds federal aid freeze
https://x.com/PeterAlexander/status/1884661943715176503
Edit: As a Brit I want the UK to come up with great new tech, and machines... But a clockwork AI would fail to scale so much earlier than any other possibility. So let the Swiss baffle us all!
Mistakes are not the same as lies. People make mistakes all the time, and people die as a result of those mistakes; when driving, for example. And we -as a society- accept that people get things wrong from time to time.
Lies, though, are a teensy weency bit different. That's deliberately driving your car into someone, rather than there being a momentary lapse of concentration.
I know Babbage is seen as being a great man, and a pioneer in computers. But that does not mean that his failures have to be attributed to everyone around him. Perhaps there were no villains, just people trying to do a very difficult task?
(1) https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Joseph_Whitworth
Which is alright, then.
As a bonus the housing situation would be a lot less critical as a third of British males and 9% of females would be pushing up daisies.
https://unlock.org.uk/policy-issues/key-facts/
In any case perjury is an offence just as drink driving is an offence, and deliberately driving your car into someone is (attempted) murder.
Something that can cause confusion is that, in that time period, a craftsman owned his own tools. And often made them. So by the time Whitworth left Clement, he had a number of machine tools (along with piles of regular tools) he had built himself, and employed a number of “hands” to help him work.
Newcastle announced job cuts last week.
Don’t know about Northumberland.
It's bred, born, raised, slaughtered, butchered, packaged and sold within ten miles of where I cook and eat it
It tastes better than the Waitrose No.1 sirloin and the Wagyu sirloin, and it's cheaper
Sunderland had a story about gagging staff from commenting on job cuts also earlier this month
And Teesside made its announcement in early December
I remember once ordering pigs cheeks at Broome House Farm and waiting While they cut two out of a pig they’d not long had slaughtered. Heaven.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyek73ly70o
This is interesting because Elise Stefanik's House Seat was 58:42 in November, and (once she is confirmed as US Ambassador the UN) there will be a Special Election in her upstate New York district.
If the Democrats flip it, then the House of Representatives will be 218 - 1 - 216 (with the 1 being Victoria Spartz).
Now, I don't believe that Victoria Spartz would vote for a Democrat Speaker, but her independence puts the House of Representatives just a single heart attack or auto erotic asphyxiation from being a tie.
I think the covid epidemic was the start of this - Covid and Brexit - too much to do and so do nothing. And do nothing. Endlessly.
A light touch in the tiller is one thing, but sailing into whatever waters you drift is another.
There’s certainly a quality range in lamb, pork, chicken and duck but you can still get a satisfyingly chickeny flavour from a cheapo bird that never saw the outdoors and a tasty shepherds pie from a shoulder of mutton down the Deptford halal butchers. Whereas if you buy cheap beef you might as well just eat a McDonald’s burger.
“OMB Memorandum M-25-13 is rescinded. If you have questions about implementing the President’s Executive Orders, please contact your agency General Counsel,” the memo reads.
However, were the the US House of Representatives to flip, then President Trump would find his actions significantly constrained.
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
(Multiple in each category)
Tracking Legal Challenges to Trump's Executive Orders
Issue, Who's Suing, Order Status
- Ending birthright citizenship, Immigrants' rights advocates, multiple states - blocked
- Making it easier to fire federal employees, The National Treasury Employees Union, ongoing
- Creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Nonprofit groups, National Security Counselors, Ongoing
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/tracking-the-legal-challenges-to-trumps-executive-orders
It is just with certain professions, like medicine or police, the effects of these flaws in human nature can be severe for other people.
Point is even if you discard those, it seems fairly pointless for what it would achieve here even if you erase moral objections. It wouldn't make anyone safer, as a punishment its merits compared to life sentences are debatable, and any cost savings would be miniscule and possibly swallowed by the legal wrangling you'd give rise to. Which could also be bad for victims given the likelihood of high profile appeals that would drag the case into court again.
Nor is it about hectoring. Plus, not only that but would then find it more difficult to speak out against death sentences passed abroad when need to - say a British national or a prisoner with our support for whatever reason.
In particular his contention that in the last third there was a completely ridiculous plot twist that strained at the bounds of credibility was completely inaccurate.
The reality is that the entire thing was utterly unbelievable. I mean, I could check off each of the ways it was silly, but I shan't.
Because, you know what?
(a) It was fun, with some genuinely great acting. (John Lithgow was amazing, as was the actor who played Leon, who vaped away.)
and
(b) The cinematography was INSANE. It was the best looking movie I have seen for a decade.
So, look past the silly and absurd plot, and enjoy the spectacle.
This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.
It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.
Why? To end any confusion created by the court's injunction.
The President's EO's on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.
"1853 Whitworth was appointed a member of the Royal Commission to the New York Industrial Exhibition. George Wallis was another member. He subsequently wrote a special report which embodied the results of observations made in the course of a journey through the industrial districts of the United States. He noted that 'The labouring classes are comparatively few in number; but this is counterbalanced by, and indeed may be regarded as one of the chief causes of the eagerness with which they call in the aid of machinery in almost every department of industry. . . . It is this condition of the labour market, and this eager resort to machinery, where it can be applied, to which, under the guidance of superior education and intelligence, the remarkable prosperity of the United States is mainly due'."
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Joseph_Whitworth
I didn't know 3 more are facing charges for kiddie porn
https://x.com/TheDailyShow/status/1884678238221287657
All the best people...
64% of Reform voters are proud of the British Empire as are 55% of Tory voters.
28% of LD voters are ashamed of the Empire as are 32% of Labour voters and 35% of 18-24s.
39% of Reform voters wish Britain still had an Empire compared to 22% of voters overall
https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/51483-british-attitudes-to-the-british-empire