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POPSArtificial brain predicts death-row executions Since the direct approach had failed, the researchers turned to an artificial neural network (ANN) - an intelligent computer system, modelled after the human brain - that is able to deduce how various factors within a jumble of data relate to each other. The system can then take what it has learned and make predictions about a new set of data.To find out which factors might be linked to executions, the researchers first "trained" their ANN by entering the profiles of 1000 death row inmates between 1973 and 2000. Half of this sample of prisoners had been executed and the other half had survived. Each profile contained 18 factors, including the inmate's sex, age, race, marital status, educational level and information on their capital offences.
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POPSI believe "I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." Neil Gaiman
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POPSExecution as human sacrifice A very interesting interview with historian Thomas Cahill where he argues that execution, which shows no deterrent qualities, is not punishment but is likely a deeply held, ancient behavioral need to kill that was acted out in ancient societies as human sacrifices.
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POPSNew Hypoxia Execution - Totally Humane & Cheap ...Emerging from the chamber, he believes the test to push his life to its limit has failed. Nor has he any recollection of his inability to reopen his oxygen supply or to put his mask back on. "I fooled you, didn't I?" he says triumphantly. "No, Michael, death was your final destination today," says Meeuwsen, who trains fighter pilots for the Royal Netherlands Air Force. "Hans saved your life." Portillo travelled to a military training base in the Netherlands to research the effects of oxygen starvation, technically known as hypoxia, on the body. His quest is unusually dark. What he really wants to know is if hypoxia can offer a humane method of killing people in the 55 countries that still have the death penalty on their statute books.
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POPSSaddam Hussein Is Sentenced to Death International legal experts and human rights observers have questioned the impartiality of the trial court, which was created to try top leaders of the ousted government during the 15-month period of formal American occupation following the invasion in the spring of 2003. "We saw this trial, along with the others, as an opportunity to bring justice to those Iraqis who had suffered horribly under Baath Party rule," Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Sunday. "Unfortunately, we believe the serious shortcomings in the fairness of the proceedings undermined the legitimacy and credibility of the trial."
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POPSAmerica's "BRUTAL Approach to Punishment. "
Inextricably linked to the long history of racial inequality, with blacks put away in numbers vastly disproportionate to their overall population. The states with the highest ratio of prisoners per population are all former slave states with long traditions of jailhouse brutality, chain gangs and other barbaric practices: Louisiana (816 prisoners per 100,000 people), Texas (694) and Mississippi (669). In many states, blacks are up to 15 times as likely as whites to find themselves behind bars. In Florida, one in three adult black men has a criminal record. Some trends are more recent - tied, in particular, to the mania for tough-on-crime legislation that has swept state after state in the past 25 years. The national prison population up 400% since 1980, the increase fuelled in particular by the "war on drugs" and incarceration of petty drug offenders. Exacerbated a host of problems from overcrowding to prison rape to the formation of ultra-violent prison gangs, many racial
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POPSSexuality Bias Seen "Banks said she believed the rumors were started by other attorneys in the Grand Rapids office who eventually landed jobs at the Justice Department in Washington. She declined to identify them. Monday's report also said that Goodling used an Internet search that included the words "gay" and "homosexual" to screen candidates and their backgrounds." Well now! We used to play a game in school called "Gossip". We'd line up several people and start a sentence and everyone changed it a little while whispering into each other's ear. Of course it was unrecognizable at the end and we would all laugh. The point of the game was to show the social implications of pettiness. So why would anyone care about sexual orientation at the Justice Department in the first place? Ah, back to that wicked game of gossip and backstabbing to get ahead eh? No better way than to call them lesbians.
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POPSIgnorance-only Sex Education It is strange that there's this whole suite of positions that would seem to be unrelated, but almost always seem to be adopted wholesale. If you know someone is against evolution, you can pretty much predict their positions on abortion, stem cells, the death penalty, education, GW Bush, and homosexuality. I wonder what common force ties all those disparate ideas together? - PZ
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POPSUN Confirms Iraqi Gay Killings Why do we hear nothing of this in the mainstream media? It appears as if differences are continuously dealt with in murderous ways. We keep hearing about and seeing reports of Iraqis killing other Iraqis. Mostly this violence is between tribes. But now we have blatant murder of ordinary Iraqis simply based on sexual orientation. Is this the Democracy we are trying to fortify and protect?
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POPSUK MP: USA Executions INHUMANE "I think the State has a right to exact retribution and in the worst cases that means paying with a life," he says today. "I still do believe in it – I switched my position because of several miscarriages of justice, not because of any change of heart. "However, I feel very strongly that if the State is going to kill someone, it should do it in a way that is as unlike murder as possible. It should be painless. "There's not an animal from a beetle to an elephant that you can kill without a series of protocols worked out scientifically to make sure the creature does not suffer. "Yet when it comes to capital punishment, we are far less concerned about whether it is humane or not. "I wanted to discover whether the science of killing offered an alternative." That is why Portillo, who has carved out a respected TV career for himself since leaving politics, finds himself at the grandly titled Centre for Man and Aviation in Soesterberg, Netherlands."
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POPSReasons to Kill And if the answer is, "Oh, but the people that I kill when I appeal to scripture are only those who deserve death," my response will still be, "Don't you think that those others say the same thing?"
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POPSRace, mental illness, & the death penalty Tommy Munford hired Guy LeGrande to kill Munford's wife. Munford's friend supplied the murder weapon. LeGrande killed Ellen Munford. Munford and his friend are white. LeGrande is black. And mentally ill. LeGrande is now set to be executed on December 1st. Munford testified against LeGrande and received a life sentence. Munford's friend wasn't even charged.
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POPSBush 'may convert to Catholicism' Yesterday the Vatican was seething at rumours that there was much more to it than protocol: George Bush,lifelong Methodist, was about to convert. The Vatican differs from the White House on immigration and the death penalty but on other issues including stem cell research, gay marriage and abortion there has been, as the Catholic daily L'Avvenire put it, "total harmony." .. Independent He'll have to become a Christian first, won't he?
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