Welcome to the tail end of the week: it’s Friday, March 29, 2024, and National Chiffon Cake Day. Below is a lemon chiffon cake, though if I want a light cake, it would be an angel food cake with strawberry-and-whipped cream icing, like my mom used to make for me every year on my birthday.
It’s also Good Friday, National Vietnam War Veterans Day in the US, No Homework Day (of course; it’s Friday!), and, in Taiwan, Youth Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 29 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Sam Bankman-Fried, the 32-year-old cryptocurrency king and pyramid-scheme grifter, was sentenced today—to 25 years in prison. He could have gotten a lot more time.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange who was convicted of stealing billions of dollars from customers, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday, capping an extraordinary saga that upended the crypto industry and became a cautionary tale of greed and hubris.
Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentence was shorter than the 40 to 50 years that federal prosecutors had sought after a jury found him guilty of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering — charges that carried a maximum penalty of 110 years behind bars. But the punishment was far above the six and a half years requested by his defense lawyers.
Mr. Bankman-Fried, 32, did not visibly react as the sentence was handed down by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan at the Federal District Court in Manhattan. His parents, the law professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, sat two rows from the front, staring at the floor.
“He knew it was wrong, he knew it was criminal,” Judge Kaplan said of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s actions.
Before the sentence was delivered, Mr. Bankman-Fried, clean shaven and wearing a loose-fitting brown jail uniform, apologized to FTX’s customers, investors and employees.
“A lot of people feel really let down, and they were very let down,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage.” He added that his decisions “haunt” him every day.
Mr. Bankman-Fried was also ordered to forfeit $11.2 billion in assets.
We’ll forget about this guy pretty soon as he stews in prison, just as we’ve forgotten Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos grifter who’s nearing the end of her first year of an 11+-year sentence (she could be released two years early). Assuming he gets five years off for good behavior, Bankman-Fried will be 52 when he gets out of prison. Not old, but he’ll have missed those great mid-life years.
*It looks as if the IDF are preparing for its ground assault in Rafah, at least according to the Jewish News Service.
The Israel Defense Forces has begun isolating Rafah in southern Gaza and has started taking steps to evacuate the city’s civilian population, Channel 12 reported on Wednesday.
The moves come despite intensifying international opposition to a ground operation in the last Hamas stronghold, which Jerusalem says is necessary to defeat the terrorist organization. The final four Hamas battalions, comprising some 3,000 terrorists, are holed up in the city, according to Israel.
There are also well over a million Gazans sheltering in Rafah, causing concern regarding potential harm to noncombatants.
As part of the preparations for the operation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the purchase from China of 40,000 tents for Rafah evacuees, which will be moved to the Gaza Strip from Israel, according to the report.
“Clear places will be defined in the Strip where the tents will be placed and the refugees will stay,” the article states.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stressed the need to protect the noncombatants in Rafah in an interview with Channel 12 on Wednesday.
“We simply cannot support a significant ground attack in Rafah which does not include an achievable and verifiable plan that would ensure the security of 1.5 million Gazans who found refuge there. And they found refuge there because of the operations that were conducted in the north, in Khan Yunis and earlier in Gaza City,” said Kirby.
“We need to ensure that their security is well taken care of,” Kirby continued. “We recognize that it is necessary to act against Hamas, we certainly recognize that Israel has the right to do so; of course they do. Hamas still poses a real threat, and we know that there are Hamas terrorists in Rafah. We fully understand the need to do so, but we do not believe that entering Rafah is a good idea—a massive entrance.”
I think the U.S. has backed off considerably since Biden said that an invasion of Rafah was a “red line” that could not be crossed (that was a threat from the U.S.) Now they’re saying that Israel not only has a right to destroy Hamas, but should destroy Hamas. Of course the U.S. is emphasizing civilian welfare, as it should, and I’m sure Israel will vet its plans to the U.S. before acting. I’m optimistic that Israel will destroy Hamas, and I’m getting a bit more optimistic that such an end will not necessarily lead to two terrorists springing up where every one has died. But what do I know?
*Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice has issued a binding order on Israel to open more border crossings to Gaza to allow the flow of aid.
The top United Nations court on Thursday ordered Israel to take measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, including opening more land crossings to allow food, water, fuel and other supplies into the war-ravaged enclave.
The International Court of Justice issued two new so-called provisional measures in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of acts of genocide in its military campaign launched after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. Israel denies it is committing genocide. It says its military campaign is self defense and aimed at Hamas, not the Palestinian people.
Thursday’s order came after South Africa sought more provisional measures, including a cease-fire, citing starvation in Gaza. Israel urged the court not to issue new orders.
In its legally binding order, the court told Israel to take measures “without delay” to ensure “the unhindered provision” of basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, fuel and medical supplies.
It also ordered Israel to immediately ensure that its military does not take action that could that could harm Palestinians’ rights under the Genocide Convention, including by preventing the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
The court told Israel to report back in a month on its implementation of the orders.
This is just South Africa’s and the UN’s way of slapping Israel around more, when it’s doing just about everything it can to prosecute urban warfare using human shields and at the same time ensuring that food, water, and medicine gets in (Israel is not stopping aid trucks). For crying out loud, the IDF has even telegraphed its moves by giving Palestinian civilians maps of which places are safe to be in, and when. But regardless of that, Israel is being held to a far higher standard than any other country in the world. Riddle me that one.
*The BBC has a short video called “Why is Finland the happiest country in the world?“, but I can’t get the 2.25-minute video to play! I want to know! They’ve held that title for seven consecutive years! (Other Nordic countries like Iceland and Denmark are also uber-happy.) So I found a year-old article at The Conversation that’s probably relevant, “Why Finland is the happiest country in the world—an expert explains.” Here’s what the Expert says (condensed, of course):
Finland comes out top, followed by Denmark and Iceland. Just why Finns are happier than others comes down to a number of factors including lower income inequality (most importantly, the difference between the highest paid and the lowest paid), high social support, freedom to make decisions, and low levels of corruption.
The graph below shows all 44 counties for which there is both happiness data and income inequality data, each as a coloured dot. The vertical scale shows average happiness, the horizontal scale income inequality.
The measure of income inequality used here is the Gini coefficient of income inequality, as reported by the OECD. It is the highest rate recorded in each county in any year after 2010 up to the most recent year for which there is data. The graph shows the close relationship between these two measures. In general, when income inequality is larger, money matters more and people are less happy.
Finland also has other attributes that may help people feel happier. It has a highly decentralised publicly funded healthcare system and only a very small private health sector. This is far more effective and efficient than some alternatives used in other countries. Public transport is reliable and affordable, and Helsinki airport is ranked as the best in northern Europe.
The article seems obsessed with the question of why Finns are happier than Norwegians when both countries have the same level of income inequality but Norwegians are a tad less happy; but this isn’t very important. The most important lesson, not shown here, is that religion has little to do with it. In fact, as I’ve shown before, relgiosity of a country is higher the lower the well-being or “success” of a society. When you’re doing well and are happy, you don’t really need God that much. This is why those Nordic countries are among the most atheistic places in the world. In contrast, when you’re not doing well, and can’t get help from your society, you have to importune God, explaining why societies that are not very “successful” have such a high belief in God. (The U.S., ranked as I discuss in the link, is not a very “successful” society; for one thing, it has a high level of income inequality.
*The Washington Post has an article on all the attention focused on Shohei Otani, perhaps the best player in professional baseball and certainly the highest paid (the Los Angeles Dodgers are paying him $700 million over ten seasons—the highest-paid athlete in history). He is a great pitcher AND a great hitter, something we haven’t seen in big-time ball since Babe Ruth, who gave up pitching (Otani may have to do that two as he’s injured his throwing arm twice). The Dodgers also have perhaps the second greatest player in baseball, Mookie Betts (arguably even better than Otani). A few excerpts (the season hasn’t started here yet, so the dateline is Korea:
Instead, cameramen and photographers started to assemble a few yards away, near the end of the Dodgers’ dugout. It would be an hour or so before more players were expected to jog out for batting practice, and Shohei Ohtani, MLB’s towering sensation, rarely takes batting practice on the field, so there was no guarantee he would emerge for pregame warmups at all. But earlier that day, a bombshell scandal involving his longtime interpreter and allegations of gambling and theft sent the sports world reeling. So they waited anyway.
Given the chance to film a future Hall of Famer honing his craft or the chance to get even a second of footage of Ohtani, everyone chose the latter. When Mookie Betts, another former MVP, emerged and saw the camera-wielding crowd, he smiled. He knew they were not interested in him, another potential Hall of Famer, a player some would argue is the face of the sport other than … well, you know.
Even the brightest stars of this baseball generation are afterthoughts when Shohei Ohtani is around.
Ohtani is unprecedented, on the field and off. The 29-year-old is the first player to pitch and hit in the majors regularly since Babe Ruth, but he does both at a time when skill levels are so high and training is so effective that it feels almost like an insult to call him Ruthian.
Since he came to MLB from Japan ahead of the 2018 season after a groundbreaking career in his home country’s Nippon Professional Baseball, he has dispelled all notions that he could not pitch and hit in the majors, too. When healthy, he is an elite starting pitcher and slugger, a candidate to lead the league in strikeouts when he pitches and homers when he hits — a player so good, and so extraordinary, that MLB created a new rule for him.
Otani may never pitch again unless his arm heals, but he’s still a great hitter, which is how Ruth made his name when he gave up pitching. Here’s a video of Otani excelling at both (he’s playing for the LA. Angels here):
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili notes that in Poland, you can discuss parliamentarianism as a political system but you need an artist as a Speaker of the Parliament.
Hili: Is parliamentarianism a political doctrine or an art?A: Both.
Hili: Czy parlamentaryzm jest doktryną polityczną, czy sztuką?Ja: Jednym i drugim.
*******************
From Now That’s Wild:
From Not Another Science Cat Page:
From The Dodo Pet; and yes, this really happened!
From Masih, yet another woman protestor killed by the Iranian regime:
BREAKING: This young woman was summoned by the Ministry of Intelligence in Iran on March 23rd and one day after, her dead body was found at her father's house.
Her name is #SarahTabrizi and she was only 20 years old. The authorities in Iran arrested her in November 2023 and she… pic.twitter.com/7lE01QcsJA
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 28, 2024
I can’t put the second tweet up, which is the one I want to show, without the first, which I’ve already shown. The first are entitled Vanderbilt students illegally sitting in the chancellor’s office because they didn’t get permission for student organizations to not invest in companies supporting Israel. Many were expelled and a few arrested. Here they are harassing a black cop because he’s considered part of the problem. How much lower can they get?
The second comprises two letters from Chancellor Diermeier (our former Provost) about the student protest. The first is to the parents of Vandy students, and the second, which is two pages long, explains the situation. This guy is a class act, and is turning Vanderbilt into the University of Chicago (our university wouldn’t suspend anybody). Three students charged with assault, one with vandalism, and 27 protestors suspended, at least temporarily (I presume that will go on their record). That is how to deter disruptive and illegal protests.
I think Chancellor Deimeier, who frequently has stated a university’s role is to “foster debate, not end it,” handled this well. Far better than other universities have done in similar circumstances.
Letter to the community just sent, below. (I have a son there, who fwiw was… pic.twitter.com/e3yksOswMa
— stevemur (@stevemur) March 27, 2024
From Jez:
When your cats have been watching too much Disney…. pic.twitter.com/6QcrTFPDUW
— Claire Bear👁☘️🇮🇪 💜🤍💚 🫀 (@claire88424030) March 27, 2024
Lots o’ moggies today. This one is from Malcolm, who labels it “How not to do it”:
he is really bad at drinking water pic.twitter.com/7TWrXYme1M
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) March 24, 2024
From my feed, and it’s adorable:
Farm dog raises a rejected lamb pic.twitter.com/qFQ0rYZNDt
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 28, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial. a Dutch boy killed with cyanide gas shortly after arriving at Auschwitz. He was nine.
28 March 1935 | Dutch Jewish boy, Jacob Leefsma, was born in Leeuwarden.
He was deported to #Auschwitz from #Westerbork in February 1944. He was murdered in a gas chamber after arrival selection. pic.twitter.com/4x0bJbe0xr
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 28, 2024
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a tweet of the article I criticized yesterday. Check out the comments:
Scientific narratives project social hierarchies onto nature. That’s why we need better metaphors to describe cellular life https://t.co/4NOsvftkjp
— Aeon+Psyche (@aeonmag) March 26, 2024
Swimming centipedes! Now I’ve seen everything!
A fabulous beautiful "amphibious" centipede in Japan. You might not believe it, but they can swim very well, and are known for hunting small aquatic animals like crabs and shrimps! The individual in the 2nd picture is trying to hide under the stone in the water. pic.twitter.com/CsiwWeVWrP
— たまや Tamaya (@Hyleomillipede) March 26, 2024
On this day:
1549 – The city of Salvador, Bahia, the first capital of Brazil, is founded.
1632 – Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629.
1806 – Construction is authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the first United States federal highway.
1857 – Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry mutinies against the East India Company’s rule in India and inspires the protracted Indian Rebellion of 1857, also known as the Sepoy Mutiny.
1867 – Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes Canada on July 1.
1871 – Royal Albert Hall is opened by Queen Victoria.
1879 – Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula: British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus.
1927 – Sunbeam 1000hp breaks the land speed record at Daytona Beach, Florida.
1936 – The 1936 German parliamentary election and referendum seeks approval for the recent remilitarization of the Rhineland.
1951 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage.
1957 – The New York, Ontario and Western Railway makes its final run, the first major U.S. railroad to be abandoned in its entirety.
1961 – The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C., to vote in presidential elections. [Poor old DC – what was that about no taxation without representation?]
1971 – My Lai Massacre: Lieutenant William Calley is convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.
1973 – Vietnam War: The last United States combat soldiers leave South Vietnam.
1974 – NASA’s Mariner 10 becomes the first space probe to fly by Mercury.
1974 – Terracotta Army was discovered in Shaanxi province, China.
1990 – The Czechoslovak parliament is unable to reach an agreement on what to call the country after the fall of Communism, sparking the so-called Hyphen War.
2002 – In reaction to the Passover massacre two days prior, Israel launches Operation Defensive Shield against Palestinian militants, its largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War.
2010 – Two suicide bombers hit the Moscow Metro system at the peak of the morning rush hour, killing 40.
2014 – The first same-sex marriages in England and Wales are performed.
2017 – Prime Minister Theresa May invokes Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, formally beginning the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union.
2021 – The ship Ever Given was dislodged from the Suez Canal.
Births:
1561 – Santorio Santorio, Italian biologist (d. 1636). [Introduced the quantitative approach into the life sciences and is considered the father of modern quantitative experimentation in medicine. He is also known as the inventor of several medical devices. His work De Statica Medicina, written in 1614, saw many publications and influenced generations of physicians.]
1780 – Jørgen Jørgensen, Danish adventurer (d. 1841).
1824 – Ludwig Büchner, German physiologist, physician, and philosopher (d. 1899). [One of the exponents of 19th-century scientific materialism.]
1853 – Elihu Thomson, English-American engineer and inventor (d. 1937). [Instrumental in the founding of major electrical companies in the United States, the United Kingdom and France.]
1869 – Edwin Lutyens, British architect (d. 1944).
1874 – Lou Henry Hoover, American philanthropist and geologist, 33rd First Lady of the United States (d. 1944).
1890 – Harold Spencer Jones, English astronomer (d. 1960).
1900 – Charles Sutherland Elton, English zoologist and animal ecologist (d. 1991). [Associated with the development of population and community ecology, including studies of invasive organisms.]
1912 – Hanna Reitsch, German soldier and pilot (d. 1979). [Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight tested many of Germany’s new aircraft during World War II and received many honors. Reitsch was among the very last people to meet Adolf Hitler alive in the Führerbunker in late April 1945.]
1918 – Sam Walton, American businessman, founded Walmart and Sam’s Club (d. 1992).
1923 – Betty Binns Fletcher, American lawyer and judge (d. 2012).
1929 – Sheila Kitzinger, English activist, author, and academic (d. 2015).
1929 – Richard Lewontin, American biologist, geneticist, and academic (d. 2021). [Our host’s doctoral advisor.]
1935 – Ruby Murray, Northern Irish singer (d. 1996). [One of the most popular singers in the British Isles in the 1950s, she scored ten hits in the UK Singles Chart between 1954 and 1959. She also made pop chart history in March 1955 by having five hits in the Top Twenty in a single week. No female singer broke this record until Taylor Swift in 2022. Murray’s name has been immortalised in Cockney rhyming slang for a curry. (I’m going to “have a ruby” tonight, as it happens.)]
1943 – John Major, English banker and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. [Described by the late, great Linda Smith as “The man who ran away from the circus to become an accountant”.]
1943 – Vangelis, Greek keyboard player and songwriter (d. 2022).
1943 – Eric Idle, English actor, comedian, musician and writer.
1960 – Jo Nesbø, Norwegian writer, musician and football player.
1961 – Amy Sedaris, American actress and comedian.
1968 – Lucy Lawless, New Zealand actress.
1972 – Priti Patel, British Indian politician, Secretary of State for the Home Department. [As Home Secretary, her proposed policy on immigration would have prevented her own parents from living in the UK.]
We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.
1751 – Thomas Coram, English captain and philanthropist, founded Foundling Hospital (b. 1668).
1822 – Johann Wilhelm Hässler, German pianist and composer (b. 1747). [Today is also the anniversary of his birth.]
1830 – James Rennell, English geographer, historian and oceanography pioneer (b. 1742).
1912 – Robert Falcon Scott, English lieutenant and explorer (b. 1868). [Also, Henry Robertson Bowers, Scottish lieutenant and explorer (b. 1883) and Edward Adrian Wilson, English physician and explorer (b. 1872).]
1921 – John Burroughs, American naturalist and nature essayist (b. 1837).
1970 – Anna Louise Strong, American journalist and author (b. 1885). [Best known for her reporting on and support for communist movements in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.]
1972 – J. Arthur Rank, English businessman, founded Rank Organisation (b. 1888).
1982 – Walter Hallstein, German academic and politician, 1st President of the European Commission (b. 1901). [Gave his name to the Hallstein Doctrine, West Germany’s policy of isolating East Germany diplomatically.]
1985 – Janet Watson, British geologist (b. 1923).
1994 – Bill Travers, English actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1922).
1997 – Norman Pirie, British biochemist and virologist (b. 1907).
2001 – Helge Ingstad, Norwegian lawyer, academic, and explorer (b. 1899). [In 1960, after mapping some Norse settlements, Ingstad and his wife archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad found remnants of a Viking settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows in the province of Newfoundland in Canada. They were thus the first to prove conclusively that the Icelandic/Greenlandic Norsemen such as Leif Erickson had found a way across the Atlantic Ocean to North America, roughly 500 years before Christopher Columbus and John Cabot.]
2004 – Lise de Baissac, Mauritian-born SOE agent (b. 1905). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
2017 – Alexei Abrikosov, Russian physicist, 2003 Nobel laureate in Physics (b. 1928).
2020 – Krzysztof Penderecki, Polish composer and conductor (b. 1933). [Composed the moving Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima.]
Woman of the Day:
[Text from Wikipedia]
Lise Marie Jeanette de Baissac MBE CdeG (born 11 May 1905, died on this day in 2004), code names Odile and Marguerite, was a Mauritian agent in the United Kingdom’s clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization in France during World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
De Baissac was one of the first SOE female agents to be parachuted into occupied France in September 1942. During her two missions to France she often worked with her brother Claude who headed the Scientist network of SOE. The couple was most useful shortly before and after the D-Day invasion of France by the allies. The de Baissacs armed and organized French Resistance forces to hinder the German response to the invasion and to assist the allies. Lise de Baissac had frequent encounters with German soldiers in the heavily militarized region in which she worked, but she eluded capture. She was awarded several gallantry awards after the war.
She died on 29 March 2004 in Marseille, aged 98.
In an interview, de Baissac said that “the loneliness of a secret life” was her strongest emotion and that “cold-blooded efficiency for long weary months” was needed more than heroism. In 2008, her life was recaptured in the highly fictionalised French film Female Agents (Les Femmes de l’ombre).
Her exploits are too lengthy to detail here, but the Wikipedia article sets them out fully.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_de_Baissac
John Major, the original “ grey man” who could not pronounce many English words and without doubt one in a long line of useless British politicians and Prime Ministers and just like Blair still doesnt know when to keep his mouth firmly shut!
Baseball season has opened in US and Ohtani had two hits and a walk, while Mookie and Freddie Freeman both homered in the Dodgers win over St. Louis.
One thing to remember about Ruth is that there was no DH then, so when he both pitched and hit he had to play the outfield between starts. Shohei has it a bit easier since he can DH between starts.
The comments on the Aeon piece are not visible when “Read 11 replies” is clicked. (You just get the one original tweet seen in the OP.) Can only Twitter users see the replies?
GCM
P.S. Great centipede!
“Can only Twitter users see the replies?”
I am an X/Twitter user, and I’ve found that those links go only to the specific posting. If I want to see the comment thread, I need to go to my logged-in account and search for that tweet (which is not hard to do). I do seem to remember being able to see the comment thread from any singular link before Twitter became X.
(Like an earworm, I still often hear the first chords of Laurie Anderson’s song “Let X=X” when I read or mention X/Twitter.)
“Let X=X”:
The length of many American prison sentences sound cruelly harsh to my Canadian ears. Especially those that extend beyond the natural lifespan and are given to nonviolent offenders. I’ve read that this is because the American justice system values retribution over rehabilitation and reintegration (and by extension redemption). Is that true?
It may be unstated, but retribution is indeed behind the imposition of long sentences. If the practice truly served as a deterrent, discouraging others from committing crimes, well then we wouldn’t have millions of people incarcerated in the U.S. So it doesn’t work. But laws are made by politicians, not by social scientists or psychologists. And the politician’s only purpose is to get elected and re-elected; anyone who prioritizes other matters, such as improving society, won’t be elected. So politicians only become politicians by pandering to the basest impulses of the greatest number of voters.
Nevertheless, history shows that we do make moral progress.
Is it my imagination from media cherry-picking or are these eye-wateringly harsh sentences being meted out disproportionately to white defendants? Perhaps these financial criminals really are more scary than gang-bangers because they are more likely to cause harm to you and me that we can’t so easily avoid.
You can’t say that America’s large penal population proves that deterrence doesn’t work. Crime might be even worse if you made no attempt at deterring it and just aimed at keeping the prison population low. If you want to do the experiment to settle the matter you could announce that all sentences will be cut by two-thirds and everyone (except Derek Chauvin, of course) who’s currently been in prison for more than two years already will be released at once. Then watch what happens. (Canada takes this approach now for indigenous criminals. Judges bend over backwards to avoid incarcerating them in the King’s prisons even for vicious, violent crimes. We are planning the same progressive approach for black criminals.)
Perhaps the best you can do to protect the community from incorrigible criminals is to keep them locked up for decades, even if it doesn’t deter their colleagues. If that is the best you can do, do it.
As for retribution, the goal is unabashedly to moderate the revenge lust of the community, not to reform the offender. The social contract is that offenders will be punished by the state and not by the victims.
I’m glad our societies are governed by elected politicians with overt agendas and not by self-appointed psychologists and social scientists with ulterior ones.
Is the SBF sentence really “eye-wateringly harsh”? His fraud cost people billions. That’s more than 40,000 person-years at an average salary.
Another way of thinking about it is that infrastructure projects often cost a human life at about $20 million (meaning that people will spend that amount on, say, railway infrastructure if it is predicted to save one life). Hence a billion equates to ~ 50 lives. (Someone who deliberately killed 50 people would get more than 25 years.)
I think we do need to punish this sort of epic fraud harshly as a deterrent.
That sounds too Christian to most Americans. As you must surely have seen, if there is anything ordinary Americans dislike with passion it is Christianity.
In Florida, at least, it is explicit (and unabashed) that imprisonment is about punishment/retribution, NOT about rehabilitation (nor even really about protecting society). The Florida DOC website brags about the fact that its facilities do not have air-conditioning (unless they have changed it since last I checked). It’s also one of the states that made it so ex-convicts could not vote, and they must inform the local authorities within 48 hours whenever they move to a new residence or they are guilty of a new crime.
Re: Jacob Leefsma: I found a tweet that said this:
I remember you, Jacob Leefsma, on the day you were born 89 years ago. You should be celebrating your special day with grand children and great grandchildren. This world is a cruel place. Rest in peace.
I have no words
I agree that the U.S. has been walking back its threats against Israel regarding Rafah. Why? I’m not sure. One possibility is that the administration has figured out that Israel will go in whether the U.S. likes it or not, so the administration wants to avoid a very public snub. Another possibility is that the Biden administration really does want Israel to destroy Hamas even if it has to go into Rafah to do so, but wants to placate its far left by pretending to kick and scream all the way. Both possibilities can be correct at the same time.
Why? Because certain Administrations in the US like to issue “red lines” in the Middle East that are not, in fact, red lines. It’s amateur hour.
Switching gears, I know that the AP article says that the International Court of Justice ruling is “binding.” My question to anyone: since when? Aren’t orders from this court binding only with the consent of the parties who are disputing before the court? Additionally, even if a country has agreed voluntarily to submit to the court’s judgment, there is no enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance, correct?
My understanding is that Israel can do as it chooses. “But her reputation?” Yeah, about that . . .
Regarding your comment of “…two terrorists springing up where every one has died.” Of course that will happen. With the IDF giving plenty of notice and helping to evacuate civilians, the older, hardcore male terrorists will stay and fight to their death while the younger male ones will evacuate. The older will say they’re fighting to be martyrs for allah, but having served in the Army for twenty years my opinion is that religion may help, but the root cause is peer and societal pressure. After the younger ones evacuate and Israel keeps the peace for a while, they’ll start breeding future terrorists. The non-combatant population of Palestine seems to have long lost it’s ability to educate their young in anything other than religious hatred. As long as the Palestinians (all Muslims really) continue to poison their children with hatred, this will be cyclical.
Hili says “Jednym i drugim,” which is translated as “Both.”
I was suspicious that it took three words to say “both” in Polish, but it seems to be legit. Weird language in more ways than one.