h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3323070/Killer-dolphins-baffle-marine-experts.html

So long, and thanks for all the porpoises.

RF

What's baffling about it? Evolution explains it perfectly. As long as the dolphins food is a finite supply then evolution is a zero sum game. It's gruesome but still intelligent.

Meerkats eat their own sisters pups.

We were practicing infanticide for a million years before Malthus explained why.

The punishment of prison is supposed to be separation from society and withholding of some creature comfort, not terror and violence.

True. Something my dad said when I was a kid, stuck with me -

"They are in there *as* punishment, not *for* punishment."

The worst offenders could be on locked isolation with one hour per week to see people for decades as far as I could care less, but I wouldn't advocate broken bones, rape, or murder for them. Might as well just lock us all up.

Please don't forget the Prison Officers who have to look after these people on a daily basis, maintaining control and discipline with ever reduced time and landing staff resources.
The general public rarely, if ever, get notified of assaults on Prison staff or the trauma, as I had a couple of months ago, of having to cut a rigoured corpse down from a ligature whilst on night duties.
It's just not in the vogue for the Newspapers or the BBC to report on.
Meanwhile the Ministry of Justice proposes swingeing cuts to front line staff, recruiting less professionally qualified (ie cheaper) staff and railroading through the Private sector.
You may wish to note, that when reported a Prison has a riot, as happened in a detention centre near Heathrow recently, it was a Private run jail, the Prison Tornado teams, which are so often quoted as being sent in to regain control, are from the Public Sector. The Private Sector don't have them because it eats into their profits.

And I said rant over

You're absolutely right, and prison architecture and the history of penology are both worthy things for scholars to spend their time on if we're going to make things better. The fact that the news doesn't cover reality on different portions of the world has not helped.

The idea of separating the threatening criminal from society (measured by degree and duration and with an eye to re-integration) as the be-all-and-end-all of legal punishment for people who would not be manageable outside (I would advocate Draconian financial penalties for small white collar crimes done with full awareness and other things; prison isn't the solution for everything criminal) is the right path.

Equally there are quite a few candidates I would recommend the only solution being a short rope and a long drop. It would solve the overcrowding problem and the budget crisis, though I doubt other than a very few would concur with such a draconian answer. As I've explained onm this thread before, my views are somewhat militaristic and noyt to evryones taste. Vive la difference!

I really don't think it's a matter of taste, but of logic. One hour a week out of a solitary cell for three decades plus house arrest for life or until proven harmless for the worst offenders. Give some people a world with the death penalty and that's the way they'll choose to die. Nobody would want what I'm offering.

>Vive la difference!< I'm with you there Norti, and I very much like your unfailing humour...especially your gallows humour

Yep without it..what the hell would we have to talk about?

It's apology day for politicians:

'British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized Wednesday for a government program instituted in the 19th century that sent poor children from London's slums overseas to do hard labour in British colonies'

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/24/britain-home-children-apology.html#ixzz0gU2T8uLy


'The former residents of a bulldozed black community and their descendants have received an official apology from the mayor of Halifax.

Peter Kelly apologized Wednesday for the loss of Africville, the black community that stood along the Bedford Basin for more than a century before it was razed to make room for a bridge in the 1960s.'

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2010/02/24/ns-africville-apology.html#ixzz0gU2dby5V




and, on a different subject, Olympic athletes doing good:

'Canadian Olympic medallists Jennifer Heil and Alexandre Bilodeau are giving $25,000 each to charity.

Heil is helping Because I Am A Girl, a foundation that helps girls in poverty-stricken countries.

Bilodeau is making his donation to the Canadian Association of Paediatric Health Centres for Cerebral Palsy Research.'


http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/freestyleskiing/story/2010/02/24/spo-heil-bilodeau-charity.html

We wouldn't be quite so much, FA, but that's what makes it fun

Henry VIII was renowned for his gallows humour, plus he was, without a doubt, a cultivated thug - Wonder what catagory I fall into

Oh, just a little self-absorbed, perhaps?

How true KB I'lljust get on with my work now

New Zealand company to make personal jet packs

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/7307195/Flying-into-the-future-New-Zealand-company-to-make-personal-jet-packs.html#comments


want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one want one

Wow!

I mean, WOW!

I mean...

just...


WOW!!!


I do find it rather amusing, however, that underneath the article are some adverts - the first of which is "Join the NHS Donor Register"!!

Wow, with a jet pack like that it'd only take me 1/2 hour to get to w*rk instead of 1 hour.

And if it can take more than one person, one could take people for a ride and charge them for it to help pay back the loan that at least I would have to take in order to afford one...

And you could pee on people from a great height

Someone does raise a vey good point on the comments bit below - in a helicopter, if your engine fails, you can auto-rotate, which allows yo t make a safe landing. Similarly, an aeroplane can glide down. If this decides it's had enough...