Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- Chinese scientists demonstrate 2Mbps internet connection over LED – That’s … very cool.
- BBC News – Parents ‘more worried about murder than obesity’ threat – If there’s one area I’d love to improve humans in, it would be risk assessment.
- YouTube – TomTom Darth Vader Viral Campaign Video – “Roundabound!”
- Unusual Words – A fun list of same. And let me say that I enjoy occasionally removing an agraffe in my alphamegamia (not to mention, in the same context, engaging in a bit of apodyopsis).
- Court: Sexually dangerous can be kept in prison – I’m no particular supporter of dangerous sexual felons, but (a) rather than let the government “civilly commit” someone after their sentence is over, why not simply sentence someone to “X years to Life”? (b) if this can be done with “sexually dangerous” felons, why not other dangerous felons? Does that make anyone else uncomfortable?
- Online Privacy: Check Yourself (Before You Wreck Yourself) | Smarterware – Basically, yeah. Sure, some environments (coughFacebookcough) make it harder to restrict who can see stuff (coughAnyoneWhoPaysFacebookcough), and there are things that you might be willing to share with friends and family that you don’t want to share with, oh, prospective employers, fellow parishioners, or prospective romances … but, bottom line, nobody is forcing you to post that photo of the last drunken orgy or your intemperate screed about [insert ethnic / religious / racial / national group here].
- Baptist Press – FIRST-PERSON: Should we celebrate the Pill? – News with a Christian Perspective – From a Focus on the Family guy, writing from Colorado Spring, for Baptist Press? What do you think the answer is going to be? “The arrival of the Pill was supposed to have Andromeda unleashed from her chains, as its proponents told she would be. But maybe the proper analogy is not woman becoming unfettered from the chains of her biology, but rather her trading the God-given power of her femininity for the lie of thinking she will find happiness if she approaches sexuality more like a man.”
- CA lawmaker proposes bill to keep away TX’s textbooks (which call slavery the ‘Atlantic triangular trade’). – And in the latest Texas revisions, war is recast as “peace,” freedom as “slavery,” and ignorance as God-given Texas “strength.”
- Texas teacher singles out Latino student during SB-1070 discussion, says Mexicans always ‘expect handouts.’ – With too many people, scratch the surface and you end up uncovering something ugly.
- Stunning time-lapse video of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, in action – Occasionally a bit too artsy, but overall very, very cool.
90 view(s)
I’m also not a fan of sexual predators/felons. However, I too think we need to figure out how to address their sentences properly. If they truly can’t be rehabilitated then sentence them accordingly. Deciding to just keep them locked because they’re dangerous isn’t good enough. If their sentence is over let them go plain and simple.
Yup. It’s not just that it’s unfair to the prisoner in question (which is a difficult gut judgment to make), it’s that it’s a practice that’s far too easy to rationalize into something even more dangerous (“we think you are liable to commit a crime again, so we’re extending your sentence proactively …”).
Letting out “dangerous sexual felons” (or, you know, any criminal) after they have served their sentence is the price you pay for living in a Free Society. Police States are always nice, safe and clean.
Reading the case and the opinion more carefully, what’s being discussed here is civil commitment, vs. continued penal imprisonment. Which is perhaps a bit more defensible (though it does conjure a slippery slope to classic Soviet commitment of dissidents).