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Marty_d

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Posts posted by Marty_d

  1. SHADY RUT (Thursday) and Consonant.  Yes less than 30 seconds (including the previous answer - I edited it because I originally said "A doesn't appear til THOUSAND" but then thought that in Australian English we say "One hundred AND one" (as opposed to US who drop the "and").  But the answer was always 0.

     

  2. That's strange, I'm the opposite.  Sick of losing stuff when computer hardware fails and you've got it in the shop with some techo trying to extract your precious photos from the hard drive. 

    Now everything goes to OneDrive and is available for all devices, very easy when you get a new PC to access all your stuff.

    • Agree 1
  3. There's no silver bullet. 

     

    Start with education.  Child care is not too early to start teaching kids not to hurt each other when they want something.  All through the education system there should be ethics and philosophy incorporated in the curriculum. In fact I'd go so far as to teach kids - all kids - martial arts, because of the emphasis on having respect for yourself and others.

    Also reduce access to real violence online. 

     

    If you're talking about current violence,  then we need to increase funding for shelters and support services,  so people experiencing violence can leave and not have to stay in the home because they have no funds to leave. 

    Court ordered distance from the victim should be enforced by ankle bracelets.  We have GPS, AI and Google maps.  It can't be that hard to geofence areas the perpetrator is barred from and alert the nearest police station if the breach them.

     

    These are just some ideas from one clueless bugger at midnight.  Surely if we prioritize this, get the right experts leading it and throw enough money at it to implement their recommendations, change will slowly happen.

    • Like 2
  4. 4 hours ago, red750 said:

    And here's another one that will bring heaps of criticism upon me.

     

    Interesting.  So you have a pretty good idea that what you're about to say will be shot down.

     

    If you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that every person accused of premeditated murder (premeditated is implied in your statement "who murder their wives...") is guilty, without reason or extenuating circumstances (eg mercy killing, assisted suicide, years of physical/emotional/psychological abuse committed on them, etc), then go for it.

    The simple fact is that you cannot.  Courts get it wrong all the time.  Juries get it wrong all the time.  People have been exonerated after spending 20 years in prison.  So they should just have been killed by the state... by ALL OF US... and we just shrug and say "Oops, sorry about that"?

     

    It may surprise you to know that I fully support the police killing of a person who is threatening the life of someone else or the police themselves.  Classic case in point was the knife killer in Bondi Junction.  He had already killed a number of people and probably would have killed more if not shot by the police officer.  She should be given a medal, and more importantly lots of counselling, for doing her job exactly right and saving lives.

     

    Your claim that the death penalty would act as a deterrent to the perpetrators of domestic violence is not valid.   There's a simple test.  You mentioned that some US states still have the death penalty (while some do not).  If you were to look at the murder rates by US state, and compare them to the states which have the death penalty, your deterrence claim should mean those states have a lower murder rate, no?

     

    Let's find out.  Below are the figures from the CDC's (Center for Disease Control & Prevention) National Center for Health Statistics.  These are for the latest available year, 2021.

    Beside them I have an indicator "Y" if that state has the death penalty.

     

    State Homicides per 100,000 Deaths Death penalty
    Mississippi
    23.7 656 Y
    Louisiana
    21.3 943 Y
    Alabama
    15.9 748 Y
    New Mexico
    15.3 306  
    South Carolina
    13.4 656 Y
    Missouri
    12.4 716 Y
    Illinois
    12.3 1,487  
    Maryland
    12.2 709  
    Tennessee
    12.2 810 Y
    Arkansas
    11.7 335 Y
    Georgia
    11.4 1,206 Y
    Delaware
    11.3 103  
    North Carolina
    9.7 991 Y
    Indiana
    9.6 624 Y
    Kentucky
    9.6 408 Y
    Ohio
    9.3 1,020 Y
    Pennsylvania
    9.2 1,101 Y
    Oklahoma
    8.9 342 Y
    Michigan
    8.7 822  
    Nevada
    8.5 264 Y
    Texas
    8.2 2,391 Y
    Arizona
    8.1 562 Y
    Florida
    7.4 1,468 Y
    Virginia
    7.2 606  
    West Virginia
    6.9 114  
    Alaska
    6.4 49  
    California
    6.4 2,495 Y
    Kansas
    6.4 180 Y
    Wisconsin
    6.4 348  
    Colorado
    6.3 368  
    South Dakota
    5.3 45 Y
    Oregon
    4.9 204 Y
    Connecticut
    4.8 160  
    New Jersey
    4.8 409  
    New York
    4.8 918  
    Washington
    4.5 346  
    Montana
    4.4 46 Y
    Minnesota
    4.3 232  
    Nebraska
    3.6 70 Y
    Rhode Island
    3.6 40  
    North Dakota
    3.4 24  
    Iowa
    3.2 94  
    Hawaii
    2.7 39  
    Utah
    2.7 91 Y
    Massachusetts
    2.3 160  
    Idaho
    2.2 41 Y
    Maine
    1.7 20  
    New Hampshire
    0 15  
    Vermont
    0 10  
    Wyoming
    0 16 Y

     

    Far from the death penalty leading to a lower homicide rate, it seems to be weighted the other way.  Obviously not much of a prevention.

     

    Just to drill down those figures a bit.

    - Of the top 25 states by homicide rate, 18 have the death penalty.

    - Of the bottom 25 states by homicide rate, 9 have the death penalty.

     

    Just for shits and giggles I also overlay the voting results of the 2020 presidential election.  *Just the overall state result, not by electorate.

    Can you guess?

    - Of the top 25 states by homicide rate, 14 were Republican (Trump) and 11 were Democrat (Biden).

    - Of the bottom 25 states by homicide rate, 11 were Republican (Trump) and 14 were Democrat (Biden).

     

    One more test.  How many of the 27 states which have the death penalty voted for Trump in 2020?

    - 21.

     

    So there you go.  The death penalty is not a deterrent.  Twice as many states in the top half by murder rate have the death penalty than the states in the bottom half.  And 21 of the 27 states with the death penalty voted for Trump.

    • Like 1
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  5. 38 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

    Sugar is a " natural " product . Just cut the " cane " & squeeze the sap out . Liquid sugar. 

    Much better than those " chemical " alternatives. 

    spacesailor

    Well, then so are opium, cannabis and magic mushrooms.

    • Agree 1
  6. 2 hours ago, red750 said:

    Because it looks bloody ugly.

    Well, picture #2 and probably #3 are far prettier than me,  and even the lady with the fat lips in #1 is too... so I'm not going to judge.

     

    As to the injecting rooms, I find that a bit harsh.  We don't know what shit people have gone through in their lives that led to them being addicted to drugs.  It's a medical problem, not a legal or moral one, and it's bloody hypocritical for us to say that one type of addictive drug (eg alcohol, nicotine, sugar) is legal and another type isn't.  If everything were legalised, produced in clean factories instead of basements and tested, there'd be less crime and premature death and the cartels would go out of business.

    • Agree 3
  7. We installed a couple of those Google Nest smoke detectors.  

     

    Now when someone burns some oil it says, in a female very English voice - "There's smoke in the family room.  The alarm will sound shortly.  It's going to be loud."

    That fortunately gives you enough time to frantically wave a book or something under it to fan away the smoke, so you never actually get the alarm (which is loud!)

    • Informative 2
  8. 14 minutes ago, facthunter said:

    This is the ONLY place we realistically will inhabit. It's unique. We are too stupid  and GREEDY collectively to care for it.. Conditions HERE shaped us over millions of years. Nev

    Elon Musk has plans for Mars.  We can only hope that he and his best mates are booked on the first ship there.

    • Agree 2
  9. That's because sexual preference and gender are two different things. 

    I'm a male, I feel/identify as male, and I am attracted to females.

    For a gay man, they may feel and identify as male, be attracted to males, and in a relationship may be more submissive/"wife-like" (although that generalisation seems pretty fraught too, the power dynamic in relationships can be all over the spectrum), but that has nothing to do with wanting to be female - they are happy as a male.

  10. 1 hour ago, old man emu said:

    That because of a personal choice that person (I decline to use an identifying pronoun) the person was entitled to full access to all things the rest of society allocates to persons defined by their genetic makeup.

    That raises a deeper question.  If a person is born and always feels that they are the opposite gender to their physical sex, and undertake corrective surgery so that their genders and sex align, is that really a "choice"?

    Kind of like sexual preference, which no-one except the truly ignorant considers a "lifestyle choice" anymore. 

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