in defense of flogging
The opening gambit of the book is surprisingly simple: If you were sentenced to five years in prison but had the option of receiving lashes instead, what would you choose? You would probably pick flogging. Wouldn't we all?I propose we give convicts the choice of the lash at the rate of two lashes per year of incarceration. One cannot reasonably argue that merely offering this choice is somehow cruel, especially when the status quo of incarceration remains an option. Prison means losing a part of your life and everything you care for. Compared with this, flogging is just a few very painful strokes on the backside. And it's over in a few minutes. Often, and often very quickly, those who said flogging is too cruel to even consider suddenly say that flogging isn't cruel enough. Personally, I believe that literally ripping skin from the human body is cruel. Even Singapore limits the lash to 24 strokes out of concern for the criminal's survival. Now, flogging may be too harsh, or it may be too soft, but it really can't be both.
My defense of flogging—whipping, caning, lashing, call it what you will—is meant to be provocative, but only because something extreme is needed to shatter the status quo. We are in denial about the brutality of the uniquely American invention of mass incarceration. In 1970, before the war on drugs and a plethora of get-tough laws increased sentence lengths and the number of nonviolent offenders in prison, 338,000 Americans were incarcerated. There was even hope that prisons would simply fade into the dustbin of history. That didn't happen.
bits of barth
Barth, CD I/1
"... all planned apologetics & polemics have obviously been irresponsible, irrelevant & therefore ineffective"
"theology... cannot be done except at the heart of the conflict between faith and unbelief..."
"the conflict of faith with unbelief can be truly significant only as and when it is a conflict of faith with itself"
bits of barth
Barth, CD I/1 7:11 pm
"human affairs - even those over which we think we have some control - often take a different course from the one planned"
"I regard the analogia entis as the invention of the Antichrist..."
"I believe that I understand the present-day authorities of the Church better than they understand themselves..."
"fortunately the reality of the Church does not coincide with its action"
"there never has actually been a philosophia christiana, for if it was philosophia it was not christiana, and if it was christiana..."
"...the Christian Church certainly does not number Aristotle among its ancestors"
"dogmatics is possible only as theologia crucis..."
"dogmatics must always be undertaken as an act of penitence and obedience"
"we always seem to be handling an intractable object with inadequate means"
prices on amazon
Amazingly, when I reloaded the page the next day, both priced had gone UP! Each was now nearly $2.8 million. And whereas previously the prices were $400,000 apart, they were now within $5,000 of each other. Now I was intrigued, and I started to follow the page incessantly. By the end of the day the higher priced copy had gone up again. This time to $3,536,675.57. And now a pattern was emerging. On the day we discovered the million dollar prices, the copy offered by bordeebook was1.270589 times the price of the copy offered by profnath. And now the bordeebook copy was 1.270589 times profnath again. So clearly at least one of the sellers was setting their price algorithmically in response to changes in the other’s price. I continued to watch carefully and the full pattern emerged.
Once a day profnath set their price to be 0.9983 times bordeebook’s price. The prices would remain close for several hours, until bordeebook “noticed” profnath’s change and elevated their price to 1.270589 times profnath’s higher price. The pattern continued perfectly for the next week.
via michael eisen.
fun analysis!
net worth
Trump: My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings, but I try. Ceresney: Let me just understand that a little. You said your net worth goes up and down based upon your own feelings?
Trump: Yes, even my own feelings, as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day ...
Ceresney: When you publicly state a net worth number, what do you base that number on?
Trump: I would say it's my general attitude at the time that the question may be asked. And as I say, it varies.
via cnn.
found: the nails
Just in time for Easter, an Israeli television journalist has produced a pair of nails he says may have been used to crucify Jesus Christ. "Were not saying these are the nails," says Simcha Jacobovici, holding aloft a pair of smallish iron spikes with the tips hammered to one side. "Were saying these could be the nails."
via TIME.
seriously?
waiting for iPad
On Wednesday morning I stopped by the SoHo Apple store in New York City to purchase an iPad for a family member. As I had anticipated, a store clerk said they were out of stock and recommended that I check back the following morning. When I asked what time I should arrive, the clerk hesitated, looked around as if about to tell me a secret and said: “Well, do you see that group of people outside? They’re already here waiting for tomorrow’s shipment of iPads.”
I looked, and saw that outside the store sat a small group of Chinese men and women ready with camping chairs and apparently all the time in the world, preparing for a chilly night on New York’s streets as they waited to buy the iPad 2.
...
The people I saw waiting outside the SoHo store mostly refused to answer questions about what they were doing. But one man, who looked to be around 40 years old and declined to share his name, said he could make up to $400 a day by purchasing and reselling the iPad 2. As I reported last year, this is more money than many Chinese immigrants make in a week.
via NYTimes.com.