Well we finally done it. We finally killed an innocent man. Check this out.
http://news.yahoo.com/wrong-man-executed-texas-probe-says-051125159.html
For years proponents of the death penalty argued that it had not been proven that an innocent person had been put to death in modern times. From now on they can not say this. This poor fellow was on parole. Last time I checked that was not a penalty punishable by death.
There is a saying that it is better than 10 guilty people go free rather than 1 innocent person is punished. Well that is not the exact saying but you get what I mean. I hate that saying. It implies that we can never punish someone because there is the slightest possibility that an innocent person may be punished. Do you want to live in a society where we put NO ONE in jail. I don't. There are despicable people who need to be behind bars. It is not as much as I have a desire to punish them but I want myself and my family to be safe.
But behind bars and dead are two different things. If we find out someone is innocent 20 years after the fact then that is sad. But at least we can give that person the rest of their life back. If we kill them then, well you see where that gets us in the story above. So I hate the original saying. But I do support this saying. Better 10 guilty people get to live rather than 1 innocent person be put to death. Let me do it one better. Better 100,000 guilty people get to live behind bars for the rest of their life then 1 innocent person be put to death. What is unreasonable about that?
The saddest thing about the death penalty is that there is no real need for it. Our prisons are practically escape proof. It costs more money to put someone to death, after all of the appeals and such, than to keep them in prison for the rest of their lives. So the death penalty does not save us money. And in a society where there is still class and race advantages we know that the death penalty can not be fairly applied. Oh yeah. And we now know that we have killed an innocent man.
I fully support life without parole. For some that may be a worse punishment than the death penalty. And we can make sure that tragedies such as this one can never happen again. Until we have God's wisdom and can guarantee that such tragedies will never not occur that should be the standard of a society humble enough to know that mistakes can be made.
Sincerely,
Trouble-Maker
Friday, May 18, 2012
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
A Sad Day
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/the-most-persuasive-case-for-eliminating-black-studies-just-read-the-dissertations/46346
Naomi Riley was recently fired. She was fired as a blogger for the Chronicle of Higher Education for the blog posted above. More than 6000 academic wrote in to complain and to ask for her to be fired. They got their wish. This is a sad day in academia.
I have my own critiques of Black Studies programs. Some of them may overlap with Ms. Riley's critiques but many of them do not. But this is not the place to explore my concerns about such programs. I am sad because academics, the people who are suppose to deal with diverse ideas, decided that Ms. Riley's ideas was too painful and she had to be fired. It hurts me to hear academics cheer her firing. What are they afraid of? If her ideas are too weak then destroy them in the arena of ideas. Seeking to have someone fired because of their ideas is an unscholarly thing for a scholar to do.
I am nearly a free speech absolutist. But I have done research indicating that many academics are not as open-minded as they may believe themselves to be. They seek to shut down the speech they disagree with. They are hesitant to hire those with ideas that radically depart from their own. This episode reinforces my fears that social pressures and political desires drive much of academia then real thirst for knowledge and intellectual curiosity.
This year we will have a presidential election. We will be subject to a great deal of spin from both Republicans and Democrats. Both parties have viewpoints to push and are not really interested in finding the best solution, just the solution that makes them seem right and the other party seem wrong. That is politics and I guess that is the way it is to be in politics. In science we are suppose to be open to alternate ideas. We are suppose to investigate them even if we think them unwise at first. But we are not that way. If you do not conform to what we want to hear then we will seek your firing and if we can not do that then we will marginalize you in ways so that we do not have to debate you.
This reinforces my skepticism of things such as global warming. Once I see there is a political agenda attached to a scientific theory I begin to wonder if dissenters to that theory have been given a fair opportunity to present their view. Or have we merely fired them and shut them out of the conversation. Incidents like this reinforce the reasons why some people treat science just like they treat members of the opposition political party. And we academics who seek to get those fired who we disagree with have no one to blame but ourselves. This is a sad day for academia.
Sincerely,
Trouble-Maker
Naomi Riley was recently fired. She was fired as a blogger for the Chronicle of Higher Education for the blog posted above. More than 6000 academic wrote in to complain and to ask for her to be fired. They got their wish. This is a sad day in academia.
I have my own critiques of Black Studies programs. Some of them may overlap with Ms. Riley's critiques but many of them do not. But this is not the place to explore my concerns about such programs. I am sad because academics, the people who are suppose to deal with diverse ideas, decided that Ms. Riley's ideas was too painful and she had to be fired. It hurts me to hear academics cheer her firing. What are they afraid of? If her ideas are too weak then destroy them in the arena of ideas. Seeking to have someone fired because of their ideas is an unscholarly thing for a scholar to do.
I am nearly a free speech absolutist. But I have done research indicating that many academics are not as open-minded as they may believe themselves to be. They seek to shut down the speech they disagree with. They are hesitant to hire those with ideas that radically depart from their own. This episode reinforces my fears that social pressures and political desires drive much of academia then real thirst for knowledge and intellectual curiosity.
This year we will have a presidential election. We will be subject to a great deal of spin from both Republicans and Democrats. Both parties have viewpoints to push and are not really interested in finding the best solution, just the solution that makes them seem right and the other party seem wrong. That is politics and I guess that is the way it is to be in politics. In science we are suppose to be open to alternate ideas. We are suppose to investigate them even if we think them unwise at first. But we are not that way. If you do not conform to what we want to hear then we will seek your firing and if we can not do that then we will marginalize you in ways so that we do not have to debate you.
This reinforces my skepticism of things such as global warming. Once I see there is a political agenda attached to a scientific theory I begin to wonder if dissenters to that theory have been given a fair opportunity to present their view. Or have we merely fired them and shut them out of the conversation. Incidents like this reinforce the reasons why some people treat science just like they treat members of the opposition political party. And we academics who seek to get those fired who we disagree with have no one to blame but ourselves. This is a sad day for academia.
Sincerely,
Trouble-Maker
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