Some last thoughts on Brett Kavanaugh

October 6, 2018 • 1:00 pm

Well, it’s a certainty that Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed today as a Supreme Court Justice, and the only thing more depressing is the thought that Donald Trump might be reelected in 2020. But let’s not dwell on that.

Today is supposedly my day off, so posting will be light; I call your attention instead to two articles. The first one is the New York Times’s editorial on Kavanaugh that, of course, mourns his impending nomination. Despite my claim that the paper is becoming increasingly Authoritarian Leftist, it still publishes some good stuff, and this editorial is one of them. Click on the screenshot below to read it:

I’ve given my opinion before, which is that Kavanaugh, even without the accusations of sexual assault, was a man unqualified to be on the court because of his extreme opinions (of course, that’s true of people like Scalia and Thomas as well).

After his appearance before the Judiciary Committee, my opinion was strengthened in four ways. First, although it’s a real judgment call, I think he was guilty of sexual malfeasance. Second, even if he wasn’t, he showed himself to be a liberal-hating hothead who, in my view, doesn’t have the temperament to be a Justice (also true of Clarence Thomas). Third, Kavanaugh’s disdain for the Left, which has surely been exacerbated after his grilling by the Committee, makes it a certainty that he’ll vote against every progressive case that comes before the Court. He is not a man of measured and thoughtful opinion. Finally, even if the sexual assault charges can’t be decided with certainty or even near certainty, other facts suggest that Kavanaugh perjured himself repeatedly. That’s a crime, and I wish they could impeach him for it. That, however, is unlikely to happen.

Kavanaugh’s appointment is just one more disaster that afflicts us in this Presidency. It is not a good time for the Left, and, vis-à-vis the judicary, won’t be until after I’m dead.

Here’s an excerpt from the Times:

The Court has had a majority of Republican-appointed justices for nearly half a century, of course, and its credibility has endured, despite controversial decisions like Bush v. Gore, which handed the White House to a Republican president. But the elevation of Judge Kavanaugh represents something new.

The nation is now facing the possibility of three or four decades with a justice credibly accused of sexual assault, one who may well be the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, or at least make it so hard for a woman to exercise her constitutional right to make her own medical decisions that the ruling is effectively nullified. Thirty to 40 years with a justice whose honesty was tested and found wanting. A justice so injudicious in his manner that thousands of law professors, and a retired Supreme Court justice, opposed his confirmation. A judge is supposed to set personal feelings aside and approach even the most sensitive and emotional matters with a cool disposition and an open mind; Judge Kavanaugh revealed to the country that he was incapable of that.

In saner times, such behavior from a nominee would have sent reasonable Republicans running for the exits. But in the end, only Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had the courage of her convictions. She can go home knowing that she did the right thing.

What can we do? Well, we can whine and seek “self-care,” as HuffPo suggests today. But the first duty we have as liberals is to fricking VOTE in November.

I’m pretty sure that most readers here won’t need that advice, but maybe you can man the phones or help people get to the polls. I’ll be out of the country on election day, but I’ve made sure I got a ballot by mail, and I’ve already sent it in.  Perhaps there’s just a small chance that Democrats will win the House of Representatives. That can stop the worst excesses of Trump, but he retains the power to veto any legislation a Democratic Congress passes (even if it’s also passed by a Republican Senate, which is unlikely). At worst a Republican Congress, President, and Judiciary, at best a stalemate.

VOTE!

Once again: Was Einstein religious?

October 6, 2018 • 11:00 am

Yesterday I reported on the new sale of an old letter by Albert Einstein in which the great man, after reading a religious book, wrote to its author and averred that he, Einstein, didn’t believe in God, the Bible, or the claims of religion. The letter was written in German, and contained a translation into English from the Letters of Note site.  I had forgotten that I wrote about this letter six years ago, and at that time gave the same translation, but was corrected by a commenter about one issue in particular: Einstein’s use of the world “childish” to refer to the stories of the Bible and the beliefs of Judaism.  (The letter is up for sale again, and, given its contents, is estimated to sell for between $1 million and $1.5 million.)

I was also chastised several times by email, and was told that I was guilty of shoddy scholarship. Someone even suggested that I was using a translation I knew was faulty because it met my preconceptions.

Well, those accusations are dead wrong. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s only forgetfulness.

But let’s look at the translation I posted as well as the original German letter and a different English translation on Richard Dawkins Foundation site (Richard had unsuccessfully bid for the letter on eBay in an earlier auction when it was unsuccessfully offered for $3 million). The entire fracas appears to turn on one word, “childish”, that appears in the Letters of Note Translation but not the one on the Dawkins site. And it’s all about one paragraph.

Here’s Einstein’s original German, which I hadn’t seen until last night:

Das Wort Gott ist für mich nichts als Ausdruck und Produkt menschlicher Schwächen, die Bibel eine Sammlung ehrwürdiger aber doch reichlich primitiver Legenden. Keine noch so feinsinnige Auslegung kann (für mich) etwas daran ändern. Diese verfeinerten Auslegungen sind naturgemäss höchst mannigfaltig und haben so gut wie nichts mit dem Urtext zu schaffen. Für mich ist die unverfälschte jüdische Religion wie alle anderen Religionen eine Incarnation des primitiven Aberglaubens. Und das jüdische Volk, zu dem ich gerne gehöre und mit dessen Mentalität ich tief verwachsen bin, hat für mich doch keine andersartige Dignität als alle anderen Völker. Soweit meine Erfahrung reicht ist es auch um nichts besser als andere menschliche Gruppen wenn es auch durch Mangel an Macht gegen die schlimmsten Auswüchse gesichert ist. Sonst kann ich nichts „Auserwähltes“ an ihm wahrnehmen.

Here’s the translation I gave from the Letters of Note site (the one I posted); I’ve put the contentious passages are put in bold.

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and whose thinking I have a deep affinity for, have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.

And the translation on the RDF site:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable but still largely primitive legends. No interpretation, however subtle, can change this (for me). These refined interpretations are by nature highly diverse and have hardly anything to do with the original text. For me the unaltered Jewish religion is, like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition. And yet the Jewish people – to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I am deeply connected – have no different dignity for me than any other peoples. As far as my experience goes, they aren’t any better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst excesses by their lack of power. Other than that, I cannot see anything „chosen” about them.

I can read German, and the RDF translation is clearly better. And there are two differences between the two English translations. The big one involves the phrase “legends which are nevertheless pretty childish”. That phrase or its equivalent simply doesn’t appear in the original German, which basically says “the Bible a collection of estimable but still mainly primitive legends” (my translation) and stops there. There’s nothing about those legends also being childish.

Further, the second sentence in bold says that Judaism is “an incarnation of the most childish superstition”, while the original German says (my translation), “For me the unaltered Jewish religion is, like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition.” Again, the word “childish” doesn’t occur; it’s an erroneous translation of the word “primitive”.

So yes, the word “childish” doesn’t belong in a proper translation, and there appears to have been an interpolation of the phrase “legends which are nevertheless pretty childish” in the Letters of Note translation. That may well have been deliberate.

But, given this issue, does anything still change? Not really, for even the better translation, and the original German, characterize religion as an incarnation of primitive superstition, the Bible a collection of primitive legends, and God a product of human weakness. Einstein still comes off as an atheist or at best a pantheist whose “god” is the laws of nature. He’s nowhere near being religious in the sense that accommodationists and faith-osculators assert.

So let’s put this tempest in a beer stein to rest. Einstein was either an atheist, a non-goddy pantheist, or a very watery Deist whose god was nature itself. He was not religious in any way that religious people would recognize—not unless they want to gather all of us, including atheists, under their wings as having some brand of “religious faith.” At least in his later years, Einstein had given up any idea of the Abrahamic god and the Abrahamic religions.

UPDATE: To settle the issue of “childishness”, reader Michael Fisher, in comment #2 below, quotes from a letter Einstein wrote in English:

 “I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal god is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervour is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”

QED

Caturday felid trifecta: Mimo the kitten discovers her ears; Nestor, the UC law school cat; cat pretends he’s too fat to squeeze through cat door

October 6, 2018 • 9:45 am

From Laughing Squid we get the full-length video that has, in excerpts, gone viral on Twitter.  The caption:

While sitting on her human’s bed, a funny little Scottish straight kitten named Mimo [see her Instagram account at the link] spotted a couple of floating triangles reflected in the dresser mirror just a few feet away. As Mimo got closer to investigate, she realized that those strange triangles were attached to her head as ears. To double check, Mimo reached up with her paw and struck a number of hilarious poses with her newly discovered pointy ears before scolding her human.

This resembles the “self awareness” test that animal behaviorists use on creatures to see if they have a sense of self-identity. Researchers stick a red dot on the forehead of an animal like a chimp or an elephant, and then show it a mirror. If the animal tries to touch the sticker on its own head rather than play with the animal in the mirror, that supposedly shows that the animal realizes that the mirror is showing it a reflection of itself, and thus that the creature recognizes that the reflection is of itself.

I don’t know if that test is universally accepted, but what Mimo is doing here resembles a self-awareness test that the cat passes when it touches its ears.

 

***********

I was over at the Law School last week, as its library is the only place where I could take out Hitchens’s The Trial of Henry Kissinger (a book well worth reading). On the Law School Quad I came upon a friendly ginger cat with a tag and a barrel-like contraption on its collar. It was friendly, too, and tried to climb into my lap as I knelt down to pet it. One student passing by said, “Is that your cat?” I responded, no, it had just accosted me. Another student said that the cat was the most popular creature at the Law School.

Looking at its tag, I saw that its name was Nestor (a great name!), and the tag had a long message on it that I couldn’t read in detail as the cat was rubbing against me. But the message began with something like, “Hi, I’m Nestor, and I’m out having adventures. . . ” Clearly the cat is owned by someone and frequents the Law School campus.

I have two questions. If you’re a law student or know about Nestor, could you tell me his story? Also, what is in that barrel around his neck?

Two iPhone photos of Nestor:

What’s in that plastic cylinder around Nestor’s neck?

 

Nestor in front of the main building of our Law School and its reflecting pool

***********

This story came from The Dodo, where you can find a video of the World’s Laziest Cat, a moggie named Mischief.  I found it because of this tweet:

Mischief, who lives in New Zealand, has a cat door, and when people are around he scratches frantically at the door but won’t go through himself. He waits until someone shows up to open a real door.

Mischief is, as we shall say, “a cat of size,” though he’s not obese (he’s been on a diet for years). He could get through the cat door if he wanted, but he prefers to have others let him in. How do we know? Because his owners sometimes find him inside when they’ve gone out, proving that he can and does use the door if nobody’s around. That means, of course, that he’s really lazy. But he’s a cat, and cats like servants.

You can see videos of Mischief at the Dodo site. One more fact:

“He’s terrified of plastic bags,”  [staff Ngawai] McGregor said. “As soon as he hears the sound, he runs away. He only meows when he sees the blackbirds steal his biscuits, which is a daily occurrence. He runs sideways because his stomach sways so much.”

But it’s Mischief’s cat door antics that amuse McGregor and her family the most.

h/t: Grania, Tom

Saturday duck report: A mallard fight at Botany Pond; sadness ensues

October 6, 2018 • 8:00 am

The soap opera continues at Botany Pond, culminating yesterday in a terrible duck fight between James and an invading drake, and then the apparent displacement of James from Honey’s affections by the new interloper duck.  That incident also included the interloper getting trapped in a window well, and me having to rescue him.

But let’s start at the beginning. On Tuesday all was well: Honey and James were resting happily at the pond, and Anna and I fed them. Here’s Anna tossing them corn from a can (you can see it in mid-air):

Honey heard a noise above (her hearing is far better than mine), and did her cute cocked-head pose to look up. Because their eyes are on the sides, ducks have to turn their head sideways to see above them. (This photo is out of focus because the light was low and the shutter speed slow.)

The trouble began yesterday morning. The ducks were gone on both Wednesday and Thursday, and I thought for sure they’d left for good on their Great Migration. I was a bit sad but also happy that Honey and James had departed together. On both days I still made regular visits to the pond with food, just in case.

When I went downstairs on Friday morning, I saw one of the office staff and said, “I’m going to feed the ducks, but I guess they’re still gone.” The lady replied, “Well, I saw two males in the pond a while back.” Two males! I couldn’t believe it, but if it were true it meant Big Trouble. But when I got to the pond, only Honey and James were there. I fed them, but they were very skittish and didn’t eat much.

When I returned for another feeding a few hours later, there were indeed interloper drakes in the pond: two of them, making a total of three including James! James and Honey were cruising around the pond, with James particularly intent on driving away one of the Devil Ducks (that’s what I call them). He was after only one of them, whom I’ve now named Billzebub. Here are Honey and James cruising around, with James ultimately taking out after Billzebub. James didn’t hurt him or attack him, for James is a gentle duck and only wanted to warn the interloper. Needless to say, they weren’t interested in food.

The Devil Ducks have white-speckled heads, which I suspect means they’re molting. You can easily tell them apart from James:

The troubles mounted.  I decided to drive away the interlopers with my Super Soaker squirt gun, but it only made them fly to another part of the pond. Finally, James decided to investigate where Billzebub was ( he had gone to the narrow part of the pond), and when they encountered each other they got into a terrible fracas, which I filmed with trembling hands. Before I took the video below I did everything I could to break up the fight, including squirting them, shouting, and waving a branch at them. It was to no avail; they were in it well and truly.

Note below that Billzebub is the aggressor; James seems to want to escape the fracas but the Devil Duck wants to peck him. You can also hear Honey quacking: she was nearby watching the fracas—perhaps to see which duck was the victor.  Eventually I got them apart with the squirt gun, but they just started fighting again in the main part of the pond. It’s all about sex, of course, and perhaps territory.

Finally, I managed to squirt the fighting pair again, and Billzebub flew from the pond to the nearby sidewalk—accompanied by Honey! (It’s the first time I’ve seen her fly.) Together they waddled into the bushes, and I decided to pursue Billzebub further, hoping that I could get him to leave the pond permanently by squirting him. When I did that, however, Honey flew back into the pond but Billzebub flew to a basement window, somehow managing to enter the window well by flying underneath a set of narrow bars.

Billzebub was then trapped in the window well, trying to get out by hurling himself against the bars and flapping his wings. I had no choice: I had to free him.

It was not easy. He was flapping around, kicking, and making little quacks. I knew I had to secure his wings so he wouldn’t break them, and so I reached underneath the bars, through the rather small gap, and managed to grab his body, holding his wings closed against it. Then I carefully worked his head underneath the bars. When his head was out, I pulled his body out very gently and carefully. It was not easy, as the gap was just a tad bigger than a compressed duck body. (I don’t know how he flew in there so quickly!) I prized him free and immediately put him down (he was wet and also heavy.).  He walked away quickly, and seemed all right.

Yes, he was all right, because an hour later I found Billzebub and Honey sitting cozily on the duck island, while James was huddled disconsolately on the edge of the pond, gazing at his former girlfriend and her new lover. It was heartbreaking, I tell you.

An hour later, James was still there and the new lovers were cozily ensconced on the island. I couldn’t bring myself to feed them. I haven’t gone downstairs this morning, as it’s still dark, but I hope everyone is gone.

It was and is saddening to me. First, James was attacked, and didn’t fight back because he’s a kindly drake. But that probably caused him to lose favor in Honey’s eyes, as she wants a mate who can defend her. It seems, then, that the fight caused Honey to switch affection from James to Billzebub. That’s sad because I thought James and Honey were a good pair. But you can’t obviate female choice in nature.

And now I’m not only sad, but feel guilty on three counts. First, I feel that I’ve lost affection for Honey because she switched mates so readily. I know that’s a dumb feeling, as nature will be nature and Honey chose the drake she found most appealing. Still, the sight of James huddled on the shore, looking sad and defeated, was heartbreaking.

I also feel guilty about this: I could have killed Billzebub when he was trapped in the window well, and then perhaps Honey would have stayed with James. Now I am not at all capable of killing an animal, much less hurting one, so this wasn’t in the cards, but someone to whom I told this story got me thinking about this when she she said, “Hmm. . . that duck could have made a nice dinner.” That was said in jest, but I started thinking. . .   And now I feel guilty for even entertaining those thoughts. No wild animal deserves death just because a stupid professor thinks he’s not a fit mate for his favorite mallard hen.

Finally, I could not bring myself to feed Honey yesterday, as that would also have involved feeding Billzebub as well, and I couldn’t bear to reward him. But that is stupid too, for ducks must have their noms, and I want Honey to be nice and plump before she migrates. So I will go downstairs with food in an hour, and feed every duck in the pond.

Nature must do what it will, and at some point I have to let go. I guess the time is now. But I’ve bonded with these wild animals over the summer, and it’s hard.

The only upside of this, and it’s not a big one, is that I finally got to hold a wild mallard. Sadly, it wasn’t the way I wanted. But I did rescue the duck, even though it was from a situation that I myself created.

I’m kind of hoping that all the ducks will have gone, so that I’ll see no more fights and not have to feed Billzebub. Then I can simply wait to see if Honey returns next year. But it’s not a good way to end Duck Season.

***************

I just went downstairs with food, as it’s getting light. It’s raining, and all the ducks were gone. I suspect they’re gone for good. This isn’t the way I wanted it to end, but at least Honey is fine and fledged eight healthy offspring. I hope she has a good winter down south and comes back to me in the Spring.

Saturday: Hili dialogue

October 6, 2018 • 6:30 am

Yes, it’s Saturday, October 6, 2018, and National Noodle Day It’s also the third day of National Space Week.

The News of the Day is that Brett Kavanaugh will almost certainly be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice today. This is most depressing: almost as depressing—or perhaps even more so—than the election of Trump. Kavanaugh’s presence will tilt the court to the right for decades, and it will only get worse if Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires in the next few years. We are well and truly screwed. Kavanaugh is not only an extreme Right winger, but a perjurer (or so I think) and now bears a huge animus against liberals. There’s no silver lining in this cloud.

Here’s Saturday on the Cheezburger site’s new calendar: “A typical week through the eyes of a [Pallas] cat“.  The manul is exultant today, as it’s Caturday!

Not a lot happened on this day in history. On October 6, 1600, the earliest surviving opera, Euridice by Jacopo Peri, was premiered in Florence with Peri singing one of the parts. On this day in 1927, the movie “The Jazz Singer,” regarded as the first popular and feature-length”talkie” (a movie with sound), opened. Starring Al Jolson, it is a movie about a Jew but also has some blackface. Here’s the plot summary from Wikipedia:

The film depicts the fictional story of Jakie Rabinowitz, a young man who defies the traditions of his devout Jewish family. After singing popular tunes in a beer garden he is punished by his father, a hazzan (cantor), prompting Jakie to run away from home. Some years later, now calling himself Jack Robin, he has become a talented jazz singer. He attempts to build a career as an entertainer but his professional ambitions ultimately come into conflict with the demands of his home and heritage.

Here’s the movie’s most famous song, with Jolson in blackface, a trope that would not, of course, be tolerated in today’s movies. His Jewish “mammy” is sitting in the audience weeping with pride. Curiously, “My Mammy” was first performed in 1918 by William Frawley, who played the landlord Fred Mertz in the television show “I Love Lucy.”

On this day in 1973, Egypt and Syria began the Yom Kippur War with a coordinated strike on Israel. Israel won, but this led to the Camp David Accords. Exactly 8 years later, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was murdered by Islamic extremists. On this day in 2007, Jason Lewis completed the first human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth, using a combination of rollerblades, boats, and bicycles.  Finally, a black day in Internet history: it was on October 6, 2010 that Instagram was launched. With over fifty billion solipsistic pictures now on view, it is the premier way for people to avoid social interaction while touting their bodies and achievements.

Notables born on this day include Jenny Lind (1820), George Westinghouse (1846), Le Corbusier (1887), mountaineer Willy Merkl (1900, died on Nanga Parbat in 1934), Carole Lombard (1908), Thor Heyerdahl (1914), and the odious Gerry Adams (1948).

Those who died on October 6 include Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1892), Will Keith Kellogg (1951), Otto Fritz Meyerhof (also 1951; Nobel Laureate), Bernard Berenson (1959), Elizabeth Bishop (1979), Anwar Sadat (1981, see above), and Bette Davis (1989). I also hear that the famed Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé died in Europe this morning.

Here’s a short video of the assassination of Sadat (note, it’s not very gory but does show the shooters taking him down at a distance:

Here’s a joke “meme” (I don’t like to use that word) from reader Merilee:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej makes a timely pun:

Hili: There is another nut here.
A: Nuts are everywhere.
In Polish:
Hili: Tu jest jeszcze jeden orzech.
Ja: Wszędzie są orzechy.

A tweet from Heather Hastie: angry bird!

Reader Blue sent a tweet showing a ragdoll cat apparently auditioning to be Maru’s understudy:

https://twitter.com/videocats/status/1048184058814115840

From reader Barry, who adds, “What am I looking at here? Or as one commenter asked, “What the actual fuck is that thing?”  I don’t know. A catfish having a brewski?

From Gethyn, staff of Theo, who sends a kitten on a giant lily pad:

Tweets from Grania; do watch the Moon video:

Here’s the original tweet;

Watch the 2.5-minute video below and then read the whole thread if you can:

This demands that you turn up the volume;

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1047150470450556928

Too true!

https://twitter.com/BoringEnormous/status/1047571331372539904

Tweets from Matthew. This guy may have dementia, and the goalie gave him a break, but the guy had the aim!

This land-dwelling planarian, Bipalium sp., truly is a nightmare.

This is new to me: a bee who wraps up its offspring, individually, in leaves. Beeritos! (It’s a video.)

 

Father lion plays with cubs

October 5, 2018 • 3:30 pm

Or rather, the cubs are playing with him. Either way or both, this is an adorable video, and a meet way to end the week.

I need this because James has just been displaced as Honey’s mate by an interloper drake—after a bitter and vicious duck fight in the water (more tomorrow). This involved me having to rescue the interloper after he flew into a grated window well and became trapped when I squirted him with a Super Soaker, and other dramatic incidents. (I had to gently grab a frantically flapping and trapped wild drake, and squeeze him gently under the window bars. He’s okay now.) My heart is heavy this afternoon as James sits disconsolately on the bank, huddled in a blob and gazing at Honey with her new swain.

Here are the YouTube notes.

A male lion watches over his young cubs in the early evening light as they arise after a day of slumber at Shamwari Game Reserve. Shamwari Game Reserve, situated in the Eastern Cape of South Africa was winner of Africa’s Leading Conservation Company and Africa’s Leading Safari Lodge at the 2012 World Travel Awards.

A misguided execution of a cognitively disabled prisoner

October 5, 2018 • 2:46 pm

This report, from the science journal Nature (click on screenshot) shows what happens when punishment is purely retributive.

The story: Vernon Madison killed a police officer in Alabama in 1985. He was sentenced to death.  In the ensuing 33 years on death row, Madison has had multiple strokes that have left him without any memory of the crime. He is, psychologists say, no different from someone born with severe enough intellectual impairment to be deemed not guilty by reason of insanity. But of course Madison was “sane” when he did the crime.

Madison is still scheduled to die. Why? Let Alabama explain:

[Madison’s] lawyers say that, in terms of his intellectual function, there is no difference between his current condition and that of a person born with an intellectual disability. The latter group is protected from execution, thanks to a 2002 Supreme Court decision.

Madison’s case differs because he did not have a severe cognitive impairment at the time he committed the murder, and presumably knew it was wrong. The state of Alabama argues that once the situation is explained to him, Madison also understands that he was tried and will be executed. Alabama says it doesn’t matter whether he remembers it, because he can still rationally conceptualize it.

But psychologists and psychiatrists say that this is very different from a deep understanding of one’s own guilt.

Well, I oppose the death penalty in general, as it doesn’t serve as a deterrent for others, it doesn’t allow those wrongfully convicted to be freed, it’s more expensive than giving life without parole, and it offers no chance of rehabilitation. I understand that if there’s a death penalty that is waived when the murderer is cognitively impaired, then someone who becomes impaired after doing the crime poses a problem for that system.

But it wouldn’t pose a problem to a humane justice system. Madison might be kept in custody for the rest of his life; but he shouldn’t be in prison rather than in a facility for psychiatric cases, or just in a hospital. What is gained by killing him? It’s not a deterrent, and if he’s still a danger he can be sequestered. There’s something especially sickening about killing someone who doesn’t know why he’s being killed, but of course there’s something sickening about executions in general.

Nature takes the humane stance in its op-ed, but the counterarguments show what happens when you dispense retributive justice on the grounds that someone deserves to be killed because they made the wrong choice (my emphasis below):

The case highlights the illogic of capital punishment. Death-penalty proponents argue that it is necessary for justice to be served, as well as to deter others from crime. Yet neither of these conditions applies here. Madison cannot see his execution as justice because he cannot recall his crime. And executing a person with an intellectual disability hardly serves as an example or deterrent.

Regardless of the decision, Madison is not going unpunished. If he escapes execution, he will spend the rest of his life in prison alone, disabled and confused by the world around him. He is no longer a threat. The court should set an example and grant mercy.

The mere phrase “justice must be served” is purely retributive, at least in this case. Killing a cognitively impaired prisoner is not a dispensation of justice to anybody with a drop of humanity in their veins.

Nature implies that a better scientific understanding of brain function could help with this case, which is being appealed to the Supreme Court, but I think they’re wrong. Someone shouldn’t be executed simply because they remember their crime and understand that it’s wrong. Neither of those are a matter of free choice.

If science does have a role here, it’s to help us realize that every criminal can be treated like a broken machine, but each should be treated uniquely because each criminal is broken in a different way. Nobody could have chosen not to murder at the moment of a killing. Because of that, because of the failure of execution to be a deterrent, and because of the impossibility of resurrecting executed people later found to be innocent, nobody should be executed.

Ever.