Also, Havard has a museum of anatomy. It has things like the skull of Phineas Gage, the man who survived a railroad spike going through his brain. Did Gage volunteer to have his head there? No. His physician donated it.
Why doesn’t Harvard care about those human remains getting a “final respectful disposition?” I’m guessing they’ll argue they have educational value and it’s okay to put human remains on display all the time rather than occasionally, even if the person whose remains they are did not volunteer their body parts to be displayed in a museum.
You don’t need technology to determine if that’s Phineas Gage’s skull. We know it is.
There is likely medical knowledge to gain from seeing and understanding Gage’s injury that can help other people with headwounds. Not from the binding of a book.
It has been understood by some for a long time, but not all. Especially when morbid curiosity is what brings visitors to your museum; without that morbid curiosity, you likely can’t make enough to stay open.
NAGPRA was renegotiated by a Native American Secretary of the Interior and, wouldn’t you know, having diverse voices helps people understand things differently, thus the massive change this year in the way museums display human remains. That’s a good thing. Be mad about the past so it doesn’t happen again, but also be glad that the display stops now.
As for using a cast, I’m sure they have one. But I don’t know if using one affects how medical research is conducted.
Oh yeah ETA: until the advent of the Internet, doctors coming to a place to examine collections of medical specimens was indeed the only way to do certain kinds of medical research.
Harvard also said that its own handling of the book, a copy of Arsène Houssaye’s “Des Destinées de L’Ame,” or “The Destiny of Souls,” had failed to live up to the “ethical standards” of care, and had sometimes used an inappropriately “sensationalistic, morbid and humorous tone” in publicizing it.
The letter, signed by Needham and two other leaders of the group, said that the library had a history of handling the book “brutishly on a regular basis, as an attention-grabbing, sensationalized display item.”
I gather this has something to do with it. It's the item that got the most attention due to of the way it was (allegedly, as I don't have any examples) presented to the public by Harvard, which was deemed inappropriate. I guess if they would have handled the item more respectfully, it would not have gotten as much as a push to remove the binding as it did, because there are tons of books, shoes, wallets, etc and whatnot from back in the day that use human skin. Hell, even the original owner of Des Destinées de L’Ame had another book bound in skin.
So it seems it just came down to the handling and presentation.
Fair point. It is more about the psychology of the issue rather than the source material itself. The skull is as is. It was not reworked and processed and it stands as a natural and dark remainder of a common fate. The othet is a purposefully crafted ornament in a not natural context, which says more about the mind of the original crafter than a fact of nature.
That said, why remove it now. If amything that was even more of a curiosity, albeit a morbid one. I would have kept it. I am aware of legends and stories of such cruel local lords of the middle ages that they had a fabled chest decorated with human skin. Just a legend. But that speak of the reputation of a long gone family, doesn’t it?
Edit:
Now, with the binding removed, the text itself will be fully available to view, both at the library and online.
Even without that binding, the text itself still preserves some of its nature. It does make you feel uncomfortble, to know that the original author had done that on purpose.
I think it’s fine to keep both the skull and the book at this point. They were not taken in some sort of colonialist archaeological expedition or anything. I really don’t have a problem with either one. That was what I was trying to get at. Harvard is doing something that is performative. It does not make up for any major wrongdoing because there was no major wrongdoing in either case. Were both unethically procured? Sure. But it’s really not worth worrying about it the same way it would for a skeleton of an ancient Navajo or something.
I’m just scanning it, so I may be missing things, but it seems to be mostly about indigenous and slave body parts. A quick search reveals that Phineas Gage is not even mentioned. So their thoughts on the matter seem pretty inconsistent.
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say their thoughts are one way or another after just skimming or Ctrl+Fing the document for less than 3 minutes. Furthermore, Gage’s own family donated his skull to Harlow, and Harlow donated it to Harvard, so with the exception of Gage himself the transaction was consensual. Plus Gage gave the tamping iron to Harvard Medical School personally, so there’s not as much ethical gray area with his case as there would be with someone who’s remains were taken without anyone’s permission. That doesn’t seem inconsistent at all, especially since most of the recommendations in the report hinge on acknowledgement of humanity and historical context, rather than focusing on a binary conclusion about whether or not remains are ok to keep.
If the immediate family of the person donated it, sure.
But even still, it’s not about what my opinion is. They have a committee who reviews these things case by case, and they’re making recommendations about their archives based on historical context, educational value, and the individual being studied.
edit to add: Gage himself engaged with Harvard, and he wasn’t held against his will. He knew he was a subject of analysis, and his family willingly donated his remains to an educational end. The two are not comparable in any way, shape, or form.
As I said, they would argue Gage’s remains have educational value while the book does not. I do not agree with that. Either both have educational value (and the book arguably does too) so they should be kept, or neither does.
No, I did read it. I just don’t think that Gage’s acquisition was any more ethical. Even if his relatives donated it to the physician, I would say that-
A) Gage himself did not consent and it should have been his choice, not his relatives’ choice
and
B) The subsequent history was basically the doctor donating the skull he was given, again without any consent, and the value seems to be “look at the weird thing happened once to this one person and is unlikely to happen again,” which is basically the same as getting your skin bound as a book except there are multiple examples of that.
What is the actual educational value of Gage’s skull? What makes giving someone a body part without their permission and the receiver then passing it along elsewhere ethical?
I simply disagree with their assessment that Gage’s skull is any more ethical or has any more educational value than a book bound in human skin. Both are preserved as curiosities. Either keep both or get rid of both.
But personally, I think both happened so long ago and weren’t the result of colonialism or slavery, so I have no issue with either one.
Did Gage specify what he wanted done with his remains? (I don’t know the answer to that.) If a person doesn’t specify, I would accept the choice of their next-of-kin as ethical.
Maybe the difference is that one is a one-of-a-kind medical oddity that was used for research and education and is a fixture in the fields of neurology and psychology, and the other is used for shock value and hazing rituals?
Was Gage’s skull uses for educational purposes that couldn’t be gotten from the information when he was still alive? And was that worth keeping it for well over a century?
Was Gage’s skull used for educational purposes that couldn’t be gotten from the information when he was still alive?
Well, when he was alive, he was still using it. That does kinda put a damper on things, from an educational point of view.
And was that worth keeping it for well over a century?
Honestly, yes. At this point in time, Phineas Gage’s skull and the knowledge gleaned from the study of it has been used to educate thousands upon thousands of people, and then each of those multitudes of educated people went on to improve the lives of thousands and thousands of people. That’s pretty damn good for one single cadaver.
For one, veracity. There are lots of unsubstantiated claims similar to this one, just look at the National Enquirer if you’d like an example. This one is real, with verifiable proof, meaning we can use it as a foundation to build more knowledge on top of. Seeing as there is no moral or ethical way to remove someone’s left frontal lobe as a science experiment, it is as close to a case study as we are ever likely to get.
Lots of things were “verified” in 1860. Shit, washing your hands before surgery wasn’t even a common medical practice until the 1870s. The whole point of keeping the original is so that it can stand up to the rigors of modern science and technology.
Technology and knowledge in 150 years will make today’s science seem sincere but laughable, just like today’s science makes 1860 seem sincere but laughable. That’s why you must preserve scientific evidence whenever and wherever you can.
The information of the book is encoded in the markings on its pages, not the molecular makeup of the binding holding the pages together. Meanwhile, it is the fact that this skull is made of bone that gives it its veracity.
Up until now you’ve been here making good faith arguments, it’d be cool if you could keep that up.
I’m not giving a bad faith argument. Both are historical artifacts. Both can be analyzed scientifically because of that. In 150 years, technology to examine that book might be able to, for example, simulate what that person looked like based on their DNA. I do not think historical artifacts should be disposed of solely because they are made from human remains.
That is a bad faith argument because the physical appearance of the person whose skin binds the cover of a book has absolutely no relevance to the information in the book. In fact, it wasn’t even Arsene Houssaye who bound the book in skin-- it was the book’s first owner, Dr. Ludovic Bouland, who did that.
Can you tell me what the color of a dead stranger’s eyes whose skin was added to a book by a third party has to do with a nineteenth century French novelist’s views on the soul and life after death?
You can’t, because there is no relevance to be had. It’s a bad faith argument.
It has to do with who the person who’s skin was used as a book binding was. We have no idea. This would be no different from archaeologists today doing facial reconstructions of a skeleton in, for example, an excavation of a medieval Christian cemetery. Any information about the past could be important. Especially when it comes to humans. It’s preserving it for the sake of basic scientific investigation into the person so that we can learn as much as there will ever be possible to learn about them.
My friend, did you even read the article before you typed up your comments? What you’re describing is exactly why they’re removing the binding. FTA:
The Library is now in the process of conducting additional provenance and biographical research into the book and the anonymous female patient whose skin was used to make the binding. The Library will be consulting with appropriate authorities at the University and in France to determine a final respectful disposition of these human remains.
Yes, and I am arguing that just doing the investigations now and getting rid of it robs future scientists with better technology of an opportunity to learn something that current scientists can’t.
And also, you’re contradicting yourself. Your original comment opens with “who the fuck cares, it’s 200 years ago” and now you’re saying any information about the past could important?
I still remember a conversation I had with a psyche major who had no idea who Phineas Gage was and thought it was an unimportant minor footnote in psych. What a twat.
Revenue of $ 3.4 million should put it around a $ 34 million value, provided it had normal profit. But it operates at a deficit, and AFAIK a not impressive growth rate. So a more normal estimate would probably put the company about $ 20-25 million.
The talk about billions is ridiculous to a degree where it’s either insane, or some sort of scheme exist to pump it to hundreds of times the actual value.
You’re smarter while taking a dump than most people are while voting for who represents them, as well as being much more willing to rethink things when questioned.
Sure polio can kill you or leave you with debilitating health issues. But at least it won’t turn you into a gay trans autistic person unable to fight like the new works order wants! /s
Nitrogen hypoxia sounds like one of the best ways to die, without pain or panic, but I completely understand why no company wants to be the supplier of the means of executing people. Small volume, small profits, extreme controversy. What’s to want there?
Well, disregarding the normal fear of death that would be there regardless of the method, I think the issue is the mask. It would be much better to just fill the room with N2. You can do this easilly enough by evaporating liquid N2. Of course, this would not be “medical grade” so people would complain just to complain.
Yeah the mask and timing is what caused that one prisoner to be in so much suffering since he knew it was going to happen imminently so he held his breath.
If it were done gradually over a period of like 30 minutes, he likely wouldn’t have noticed and just drifted into unconsciousness.
It would need to have some hardware interlocks engineered though for safety reasons. After turning on the gas, you won’t be able to physically open the door until the ventilation system removes the nitrogen after the execution.
You could do that although N2 gas is not that dangerous. Just opening a door to a well ventilated room will get rid of the gas. It is not poisonous or anything. Its not like you are doing this every week that you get lax about procedure.
…No, you’d notice. When you’re in that “not quite enough oxygen in the room” scenario, you get tingles and headaches and such. It kinda sucks. Though I think I’d rather die that way than those gas station lethal injections they’ve been doing.
If you bake bread, you are a bread baker. If you play football, you are a football player. If you murder someone, you are a murderer.
If you don’t commit the crime of murder, you are not a murderer. Murder is a legal term. Administering a death penalty is not murder, since it is not a crime.
No matter how much batman says otherwise, there is nothing inherently not ok about death penalty for murderers. Of course, you can dislike it all you want. But don’t go slandering people that disagree with you.
Arguably, the opposite is true: If I decide I really want to kill you, what should be the minimal punishment? Is it ok to just pay a fine? Is it ok to be in prison for a month? How about a year? What if I decide the slap on the wrist punishment is worth it? Why should the punishment be less than paying with my own life in kind? Why is your life worth less than mine when I am the murderer in this hypothetical?
If I decide I really want to kill you, what should be the minimal punishment?
Life in prison.
Murder is a legal term. Administering a death penalty is not murder, since it is not a crime.
Murder is not exclusively a legal term; it is also used in ethical/moral discussions, like how I used it. A government can decide legallity, but it cannot decide if something is moral or not, although most governments attempt to do so. What is moral or not is also not universal, and can vary across different cultures and time periods.
But don’t go slandering people that disagree with you.
You mean like what you just did with this comment?
Keep in mind, in the US, there is a ~4% false conviction rate for the death penalty. That means that ~4% of people who get the death penalty are innocent.
I am also honest about why I don’t support it. I think killing people for any reason is wrong except for the case of a direct threat of violence (self defense). The 4% statistic is just another one of my reasons, but not my main reason.
If you don’t commit the crime of murder, you are not a murderer. Murder is a legal term. Administering a death penalty is not murder, since it is not a crime.
Same (faulty) logic used to tell the oppressed not rise up against their oppressors. If you’re going to conflate all killing with murder, be prepared to get into weeds like self defense and right to die. If you’re willing to admit killing humans is more nuanced than that, then and only then we can have a real discussion.
Sure. I can say that self defense (only in cases where there is an immediate threat of death) is fine due to it being a life or death situation. I can also agree to right to die being okay since there is consent, so long as the person is considered to be in a mentally healthy state.
Not sure about the rising up thing, though, but that is very nuanced. I believe in democracy, but most of the time, corruption makes it so that true democracy becomes impossible. Overthrowing a government is also a difficult topic, since often times, it is a movement that gets coopted by the powerful or by those who seek power instead of those who seek the government to serve all of its people.
There is a difference between reacting to a situation vs creating a new situation.
Very few people would argue against having to use violence to stop someone else from using it, in the moment where other options don’t present themselves. However a murdered container in prison is no longer a threat. The state has the luxury of just keeping them there until time and nature does her thing.
Basically the rules for a crisis are not the rules for a non-crisis. Additionally, if it is required to use violence to stop violence at least the hope is something bad won’t happen. Not the case for someone in jail. The bad thing already happened.
More broadly Ukraine has the right to defend herself. She does not have the right to burn down parts of Russia 40 years from now when the war is long over.
That’s a ridiculous argument. If I believe a bank robber should be stopped from robbing a bank using force, can’t I also demand the force is not excessive?
Thinking death is an appropriate punishment and torture isn’t is not contradictory.
I literally said the opposite. Just because I don’t believe people should be allowed to rob banks, I don’t believe they should be killed or maimed for it.
Just because I believe the death penalty is just does not mean I believe people should be tortured.
It is not a good thing in the real world, because of how corrupt and incompetent governments are and can be. There isn’t a benefit that could outweigh executing innocent people.
In a hypothetical world where we are certain who is guilty, do whatever is more practical/convenient: If it is cheaper or better at deterring crime rate, execute them. If it is more practical to give them life in prison then do that.
In the world we have where executions are happening, N2 is leagues better than any other method I heard of being used in practice. And there are many much more important issues to fix.
These are actually excellent examples as to why the death penalty is terrible and we shouldn’t listen to the advocates for continuing this brutal practice.
#1 completely invalidates the practice by acknowledging that innocent people get killed by it. Amazing that you would make an “in the real world” argument as if that’s not where we live.
#2 has plenty of real-world data to suggest that life in prison is cheaper and more practical than the death penalty in ~100% of cases, further invalidating the practice as useful or economical.
#3 is just a devil’s advocate argument about a society that currently practices execution, and I have zero interest in a “if we must kill people” argument, because I absolutely have no tolerance for the state having the power to decide that its own citizens must die. Humoring that is complicity in murder afiac.
In all you didn’t answer my question because there is no valid purpose for execution than to satisfy bloodlust and to give the state ultimate authority over its people.
I did answer your question, you just assume like so many people that because I disagree with you on some points, I must be a contrarian who disagrees with everything.
I do not support the death penalty. I came here to defend N2 because after giving it a lot of thought, N2 would be my preferred method of euthanasia if I needed it.
As for point 2 and 3, I am just saying it would be a bit better to ban it. But there are literally hundreds of more important things to care and lobby about like Gaza, school shootings, healthcare, mental health, police violence ,… All much more important than a handful of convicted murderers being executed.
Just reforming the legal system to maybe not have 4% of the largest incarcerated population in the world be innocent would do a lot more good.
this guy thought it was fine to kill someone for $1000
And we have the capacity to be better than that.
There was no compelling need to execute him. If such a compelling need did exist, it would have presented itself in the past 36 years where he was in custody but not executed. But it didn’t, so the state just waited until some arbitrary time to tick a box that didn’t need to be ticked.
Having a comparator does not automatically make something light.
Water torture is not “light” simply because we’re not gouging eyeballs and cutting off testicles. Burning someone with acid is not “light” simply because we’re not actively lighting them on fire.
You have yet to provide any justification for your claim that imprisonment is “light” other than that it’s not death. You can’t justify barbarism simply by saying that something else that isn’t barbarism is lighter by comparison, and therefore barbarism must be justified. Were that true, you could try to justify any proposed barbaric act by saying that the second worst thing is “light” by comparison.
What is the necessity of killing someone after 36 years of not killing them? There’s clearly not a safety concern, or a concern of escape, or anything else pressing. It’s so far removed from the original crime that it’s not really a punishment for that crime anymore: the last 36 years of imprisonment were the punishment. It’s just an act of barbarism for the sake of ticking a box.
I guess both barbarism and light are subjective, but I think I understand your argument.
That being said, there are so many things more barbaric than executing criminals going on in our societies that focusing on this is like fixing a burst water pipe on the sinking Titanic.
“Other things are bad so we should fix nothing” is bad reasoning. If we all agree that something is bad and can be fixed by proper legislation, then it should be done. The price of tea in China has no bearing on whether this specific problem should or shouldn’t be fixed.
If you have other things you want to focus on, feel free to advocate for those in the proper channels.
In this analogy, what is the “water?” Legislators’ time? Because that time is consumed much more by political infighting than any specific topic for legislation.
You realize right now is that your argument is essentially that we should keep killing prisoners because not killing them would take time away from “other things,” things so pressing they can only be spoken about in the most vague of notions?
“Yeah, I totally want to go to your wedding bro, but I’ve got sooooo much stuff going on, just like… you know, soooo much and all and yeah, totally wish I could bro.”
I am thinking more in terms of public and activist focus. Hey, if you don’t like killing people, how about not sending weapons to bomb 10s of thousands of actually innocent civilians in Gaza and spread famine that could kill many more as opposed to handful of convicted murderers.
But if you can solve political infighting and get politicians to focus on solving all these issues, that would be even better. I just don’t see how that would be possible.
I am opposed to those things as well, so we agree on that point. Maybe the legislators can sponsor a “stop killing people” bill that includes provisions for both not bombing Gaza and also not executing prisoners? Sounds like a win-win to me.
The government not getting to misuse the death penalty and not bombing civilians? Sounds like a win-win to me too. Almost too good to be possible in a hyperpolarized two party system.
As I wrote in a different thread, yes, I agree we should not have death penalty due to the high possibility (inevitability?) of executing innocent people.
I just don’t see any moral issue with executing actual murderers with N2, just the practical issue of not being able to precisely determine who the murderers are.
Or we could just not retaliate with execution. We could follow the evidence that execution doesn’t reduce crime rate or severity and to not make murderers of the state
Its this flawed argument on repeat. You just start assuming that killing a murderer (“life for a life”) is somehow automatically wrong and then use it to show death penalty is wrong.
Why is “life for a life” somehow unfair demand for the premeditated murderers? What is this based on? Or just repeating it because you heard it so often.
Youre Right I’m just parroting the idea that killing is bad. Definitely not from a belief that punitive justice is ineffective at reducing crime, that we as a society must be better than our worst people, and a deep terror informed by history at the idea of a government having the power to decide to kill its own citizens.
Like seriously this is fucking gas chambers in Alabama and some people aren’t just horrified by where that might go?
You mix two very different issues. Whether our corrupt governments should have the power to execute people, which they shouldn’t but its not what this article is about. Also, since they had this power since like the beginning of written history, I kind of am too used to it to be horrified.
And if we are executing people, what the method should be. Electric chair is something that actually horrifies me. So if we at least get a 100x more humane method, it is a win in my book. Certainly not gonna loose sleep because it has association with Nazis. So does VolksWagen and Fanta.
Yeah but nobody is mad that the Nazis were drinking fruit based beverages, our problem is that they were doing mass murder. And the method of gas was important to that because it was easier to stomach and scale.
The Nazis were also using trains to transport them because it was more efficient. Lets ban trains. They used guns to keep them in line. Ban governments from having guns. They used fences to keep them in camps. Lets ban fences.
There is no logic to this argument. Its just an appeal to emotion.
Still not enough. I have had the same stance for a long time. The death penalty should only be used, if ever, for crimes so bad that to not use it is to say thr crime was as bad as regular murder. Warlords who commit genocide level.
Just not true! The execution method requires a willing or unconscious victim. Why do people think any type of asphyxiation will be nice and peaceful regardless of the gas used? (yes I understand the “science” behind using this gas.) but what if the person holds their breath, or account for the added adrenaline, or the person hyperventilating. I can go on. It’s not medically sound way to execute people. Honestly, this is the same lies they pushed about previous humane execution methods. “it’s painless, the science is sound.” I promise you, after about 5 more “botched” executions using this N2 method it’ll be abandoned.
That’s the point you pull out and try to focus on? “Humane” executions always had a medical backing for why it world work.
Then the you try to say “is the best way of execution I can think of short of explosives near the brain.” oh really that’s the best you can think of? Shows how flawed and warped your understanding of this is. If you honestly want to make it as quick and painless in pretty sure the French figured that out back in 1789. But Ya let’s blow up people’s heads with c4.
Your brain can function without oxygen for over 30 seconds. I see no reason why it wouldn’t in a detached head.
The guillotine suffer from the same issue most execution methods used until now, they only seem “quick and painless”. Nitrogen gas actually is painless.
I really would like to know: The people who object to N2, if you could pick any reasonably practical execution method (but it has to be execution, no death by old age), what would you pick?
Pick? I’m not picking anything. N2 will be found to be unsuitable for execution for several reason. When I first heard they were exploring the idea, I knew scientifically what they were going for. But knew it would be implemented poorly and would never take individuals bodies and minds into the method. Book mark this comment as I’ll be back every time this ends up “botched.”
You know I’ve always wondered about pro execution people, do you trust government on a local and/or federal level enough to take a life? We know for a fact or justice system is corrupt, flawed, full of biases, and routinely gets it wrong. And you think they’ll get N2 executions right? It’s a simple idea but complex when actually attempted. You’re going to trust the people that couldn’t even make it as a police officer or lawyer to ensure the gas is pure enough, the room was made correctly to house the gas, or that the gas was applied long enough? These aren’t the sharpest people doing the execution and are sick enough mentally to do said execution. So how about you pick or better yet why aren’t you the person carrying out the execution since you are so knowledgeable about this?
First of all, if after all this time electric chair and lethal injection were not found unsuitable, I have zero faith this one would be (at least for the right reasons) regardless of botched attempts.
Second of all, I don’t advocate for our corrupt governments to handle executions. I 100% agree they can’t be trusted with this.
But there is no issue with the method itself, which is what this article is about and I am commenting on. Purity of the gas? What for? Unless there is so much oxygen the patient survives, it should not matter. Certainly not any trace amount you would have in industrial nitrogen supply.
It was effectively outlawed in 2008 by the Nebraska Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court didn’t take up the case and effectively banned it by not accepting applies.
This would only ban it in Nebraska. Scotus not taking appeal is not the same as scotus taking the appeal and denying it and even that is not the same as scotus ruling it unconstitutional.
Especially if the lower court ruled based on Nebraska law or constitution. Scotus rejecting appeal to such is just standard: We don’t care what states do. Which is the default in Federalism. States can ban things the Feds allow*.
Ah yes, the ole “let’s bring back the guillotine that left you alive and semi conscious for up to 30 seconds while your head rolls around” argument. Such humane, much wow
Media witnesses said Smith appeared conscious for about ten minutes. He shook and writhed for about two minutes on the gurney, followed by about five minutes of heavy breathing.
Yeah you need to be in a chamber where your exhaled co2 is so immediately diluted that you get no feedback from it. I believe the current attempts used normal medical masks
Because they did in the worst way possible. All Alabama had to do was flood a sealed room with nitrogen and the execution would have been fairly “unremarkable”. Instead they forced a has mask on Smith that required his cooperation to function properly, didn’t have a one-way valve to remove exhaled gas, causing CO2 to build up in the tiny mask.
A haircut is also a painless and quick procedure, but that doesn’t mean your barber can’t be incompetent and totally fuck up your scalp.
Is there some reasoning behind that? As far as I know, there are at least some gas chambers in the US. And even if Alabama happens not to have one, it doesn’t seem too complicated to build one.
Give me a Cessna Caravan and I’ll kill anyone you want with hypoxia 18 at a time. It’s not that hard. Alabama fucked it up because school is illegal there.
Especially if the American Barber Association has a rule that none of its members may participate in the haircut; and scissor manufacturers all refuse to sell to you. So you end up having it done by a random person who doesn’t mind ignoring what every barber says, using a pair of rusty scissors the sherrif was able to find at a garage sale.
That’s the thing and something I bring up with other engineers all the time. The medical community decided to not help and the result is the government can’t do it very well making it harder and harder to justify the practice. Engineers however continue to work on military tech.
We need to organize and blacklist those that help make weapons.
Why do people be such a hard on for asphyxiation executions. This is the same shit the said about the first gas chamber. What about the added adrenaline from the body and mind knowing the are in a death situation? What is the person beings to hyperventilate? Even the persons level of muscle mass can effect how fast it takes or when the body switches over to known O2 sources of energy to contract muscles in an attempt to keep the heart pumping. Probably the Cedar like conversions we saw from the first person they tried this on. This will inevitably be found to be an on sound way execute people and outlaw, the only question is how many people will be tortured to death before people wake up!
I didn’t. Then I earned a flight instructor certificate and taught it for a few years. And I’ve flown unpressurized airplanes to their service ceilings. Lemme tell ya: Hypoxia is some serious shit.
What about the added adrenaline from the body and mind knowing the are in a death situation?
The brain needs oxygen to live. No oxygen, brain die. I wonder how much adrenaline was in the systems of all them cave divers who ran out of air over the years.
What is the person beings to hyperventilate?
Done correctly, the condemned won’t live long enough for hyperventilation to be a factor. But go ahead and try; it’ll only kill you faster.
Harken back to 9th grade health class and recall that mammalian lungs function by diffusion. Oxygen enters your blood only because chemicals want to pass from areas of relatively high concentration to relatively low concentration. Blood that has entered the lungs from the body doesn’t have much oxygen in it; some but less than fresh air. So oxygen flows in, and CO2 flows out. The reason putting your head in a bag sucks so much is because CO2 quickly builds up in the bag, and then it stops flowing out of your blood. Your body has the ability to feel too much CO2, and that sensation sucks a lot. If you’re in a big room full of nothing but nitrogen, your body can get rid of the CO2, and it will actually get rid of oxygen too. The blood in your veins, returning from your body to your lungs, that doesn’t have much oxygen in it, does have some. And if the air in your lungs has absolutely no oxygen in it, that “some” oxygen in your blood will diffuse out.
In normal air, hyperventilation sucks because you actually remove too much CO2 and that messes with your body’s natural ability to regulate your breathing. But, it doesn’t take many lungfuls of zero oxygen air before you lose consciousness.
That feeling of panic you get when holding your breath, or breathing with your head in a bag, where you’re breathing in your own old breath, and it hurts and sucks? That feeling happens because there’s too much CO2. In a low oxygen environment with plenty of air for you to exhale in, that doesn’t happen. You just get a little dizzy, you get a little lightheaded, you fall over and just fucking die before you realize what the problem is. Happens to sailors sometimes; there are compartments of big steel ships that are usually sealed, the walls use up all the oxygen in there by rusting, then a sailor has to go in there to maintain something. They open a door, climb in, take a few steps, and fall over and just fucking die.
That’s how you would describe it if you were his buddy at the door watching him. “He was fine, then he fell over and just fucking died.” Because the air around your face outside the door is safe to breathe, the air 6 feet away on the other side of the door killed your friend in less than a minute and it’ll kill you too if you try to climb in and help him.
And the scariest thing is it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t smell, it doesn’t taste, it doesn’t feel. It breathes like normal air because normal air is mostly nitrogen. We breathe it all the time; most of the gas in your lungs right now is nitrogen.
Even the persons level of muscle mass can effect how fast it takes or when the body switches over to known O2 sources of energy to contract muscles in an attempt to keep the heart pumping.
And Commander Adama might set his light saber to warp drive. Have you considered that?
List of the human body’s "known 02 sources:"
The lungs.
That’s it. Your body doesn’t have any spare oxygen saved up in your bones or whatever. No oxygen go in mouth and nose, no oxygen go in blood, no oxygen go in brain, brain die.
The heart can pump all it wants, if the heart pumps blood with no oxygen to the brain, the brain dies. That’s the fundamental principle we’re working with here.
I had to go through fairly extensive training so that I didn’t kill myself and several other people this way by accident, yet Alabama couldn’t manage it properly on purpose.
If “right to die” laws become more of a thing, this would be the most compassionate way of doing a home suicide kit. I wonder if the manufacturers would oppose that as well, or only executions.
Like you said, there’s not much in it for them either way.
For a home kit, there’s a lot less potential for abuse. You don’t need hard drugs, or any abused drugs, it’s just nitrogen. The person doesn’t have any feeling of suffocating, they just go to sleep. Similar to why carbon monoxide poisoning is so dangerous.
Sure. If it was done correctly and we could trust the justice system to not kill innocent people. However they figured out the cruelest way to do it and SCOTUS ruled we have to kill innocent people even if all the evidence says they’re innocent because it might hurt the court’s reputation of they back down.
SCOTUS ruled we have to kill innocent people even if all the evidence says they’re innocent because it might hurt the court’s reputation of they back down.
I’m not familiar with this. Is this something that actually happened?
They were arguing ineffective counsel post conviction because evidence wasn’t submitted that could have shown Ramirez was innocent. Lower courts agreed, citing previous SCOTUS rulings. SCOTUS decided federal courts must be bound by the original evidence only.
Money Quote -
Two of those costs are particularly relevant here. First, a federal order to retry or release a state prisoner overrides the State’s sovereign power to enforce “societal norms through criminal law.” Calderon v. Thompson, 523 U. S. 538, 556.
Second, federal intervention imposes significant costs on state criminal justice systems. See, e.g., Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 90. Pp. 6–8.
(Separated for clarity)
Personally I love how they say we need to respect a state’s right to enforce social norms. With the death penalty. Because those are equivalent things. Betty doesn’t like to mow her lawn. She likes to let her neighbor Lucy do it. Off to the chair for her! Okay jokes aside what they mean is their power to make laws, enforce laws, and have a court system.
And then it’s too expensive? Really? I’m not going to be surprised when we end up with the purge only instead of being everywhere it’s actually when the air raid siren goes off during yard time at the prison.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that state prisoners have no constitutional right to present new evidence in federal court to support their claims that they were represented at trial and on appeal in state courts by unqualified or otherwise deficient lawyers. The vote was 6-to-3, along ideological lines.
. . .
On Monday Thomas wrote the majority decision hollowing out that 2012 ruling on behalf of the court’s new six-justice conservative super majority.
He said that federal courts may not hear “new evidence” obtained after conviction to show how deficient the trial or appellate lawyer in state court was. To allow such evidence to be presented in federal court, he said, “encourages prisoners to sandbag state courts,” depriving the states of “the finality that is essential to both the retributive and deterrent function of criminal law.”
. . .
Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “perverse,” and “illogical.” The Sixth Amendment “guarantees criminal defendants the right to effective assistance of counsel at trial,” she said. “Today, however, the court hamstrings the federal courts’ authority to safeguard that right.”
The idea that it’s more Important that the process is followed and then stops at some point than that justice is achieved.
Same reason they barred introduction of new evidence when appealing from state court to federal, giving potentially corrupt state courts full power to block exculpatory evidence to deny someone justice because the federal courts must uphold the verdict if the evidence which was accepted indicates guilt under the state law. Same thing if the prosecutor knows of evidence of innocence and withholds or, or if the evidence only turns up after the trial. You get only one chance and then you’re screwed.
yes more then once. Most recently the supreme court ruled you can’t bring new evidence to an areal. Why? because it would undermine the state right to be sure of their decision. Also note that the most successful way to win an appeal on a criminal case was to bring new evidence that showed your defense did not do their job or the prosecution withheld evidence that showed your innocence.
Haha yeah, I’m sure that got an entire slide in the PowerPoint at the board meeting. I’m sure plenty of people there morally object. I also think that a steady and sizeable stream of income would instantly cure those objections though. But as the person above said already there is only a trickle of pennies in it for them.
Obtaining a barber license means that you have completed a minimum of 1,250 hours of instruction in barbering education within a period of at least 9 months or completed 1,250 hours of training. It takes 1,250 to 2,000 hours to be a cosmologist. Police in Germany get 2.5 years of training, and in Finland, police education takes three years to complete. Police in the USA get 750 hours.
When I first heard about it, I could not believe it. Fair enough there is shortages of police so they want recruitment process to hasten. But this is at the expense of public safety as there are too many trigger-happy police. Which is counter to “protect and serve” motto!
Are we supposed to think it’s normal that millennials are the first generation in modern American history who will die younger and poorer than their parents?
On average a quarter of millennial parents’ combined income goes to childcare. That is bizarre and unprecedented. Is it normal that they have 1/10th the wealth their parents did at the same age? That very few of them will retire?
People are unhappy because their lives suck. Millennials have iPhones and cars, sure. But these are toys. They aren’t important. What’s important is family, community, access to nature, good health, education, accomplishments, creative outlets, hope for the future. Instead we have YouTube and Samsung and other distracting material garbage that all the neoliberals think amounts to anything. Ridiculous.
I think the most painful thing is how nihilistic our culture has become with just…being ok with this. Like yeah, we’re supposed to think it’s normal.
Then you look over at Zoomers and they’re gleefully making unintelligible memes about how everything is doomed. Hopelessness is their comedy. It’s sad.
Right now, we’re pissed off and want home ownership and the concept of retirement back.
Are they trying to wait us out until the younger working class isn’t even familiar with the concept? Look what happened to unions, until people finally started digging it up and bringing them back into fashion.
We must absolutely refuse to forget this, and just beshruggingly accept it as normal.
I think the most painful thing is how nihilistic our culture has become with just…being ok with this. Like yeah, we’re supposed to think it’s normal.
Boomers won’t admit to causing most of the issues and keep making things worse. When the only solution for Millennials appears to be fighting Boomers for their lives it’s no wonder many choose to just… check out mentally. It’s parental abuse on a generational scale.
A lot of what you’re talking about is discussed in Elizabeth Warren’s (now 20 year old) book The Two-Income Trap.
The central premise is that, as many middle class women entered the workforce, you would think that two working parents would be a way to get ahead in the economy, but in reality the combined incomes of two professional adults with children just became a “new floor” of sorts, for a number of reasons.
Multiple SUVs, the ubiquity (and perceived necessity) of consumer electronics, childcare costs, and emphasis on living in premium housing areas for the good schools… all good life improvements in their own right, but definitely eat into the supposed “gains” of adding a second income. Even in high income areas people ratchet their expectations and living standards up, so earning six figures each is sorta like the bare minimum. Will you have more “stuff” than a poor person? Absolutely. But that doesn’t equate to quality of life necessarily.
She said he told her that he picked up four bananas, one of which he ate on the way to the register, and that he told the cashier that he needed to pay for four bananas even though she scanned only three. Anjelica Lee said her father told her he was followed closely while he was shopping by a white female employee, who, she said, accused him of stealing the banana he ate.
…
“At first, I was trying to ask her what happened, and she was like, ‘People like you and him shouldn’t come into the store if you don’t have money to pay for things,’” Anjelica Lee said. “My mom is white, and my dad is Black. So I’m mixed. So I think she meant Black people. And it just escalated from that, and she went to cussing me out.”
JFC. Racist piece of shit.
Fuck the cops. Fuck this piece of garbage cashier.
Fuck, that’s a good question. The first time I read it I thought one interaction was with a cashier, but now I don’t see “cashier” anywhere lmao. Oopsie daisy :p
Wow. Non American here. My kid regularly eats while I shop. I just bring empty packets to register for them to scan and they normally throw them out for me. No problem. Like zero problem.
I don’t even think our police would show up if they were called. They take 3hrs to turn up to a home invasion, so I doubt they’d show up for a banana. This is a crazy level of policing.
A lot of retail stores will have a police officer sit in their car close by so they can have a quick response to e for shoplifters. I see it a lot in areas that have several larger retail stores grouped together.
Yeah this is some abusive, privileged bullshit and I really hope this idiot learned a lesson. I also hope her child reminds her of this shit anytime she starts mounting her high horse in the future.
She mistakenly thought that calling the cops to talk to her child about not stealing would help him understand why it’s wrong and what the stakes are. She’s an old white woman. She didn’t realize that cops wouldn’t treat her large, black child as subhuman.
She was stupid and ignorant, but the cops are the monsters here. Don’t get it twisted with your own relationships with your parents. This isn’t that.
Insanely weird to project your parental issues on a lady calling the cops on her adopted black child, but being old is not an excuse for not being aware of the century long issue of cops treating black people poorly.
there was a time where media portrayed that as a reasonable thing to do, the police would come and talk to their kid. I’ve heard stories about it happening. Hell when i kid we got caught being destructive and the cops who caught us took us on tour of where we could end up. We got brought in the truck straight to the cells. It is a foolish thought but a person who holds some idyllic model in their heads sometimes are blinded by it.
When I was in cubs as a child, they took us to a police station and the cops talked to us about various things, we got our fingerprints taken (for us to keep, not their system) and we got to check out the jail cells.
Cops have definitely been used for educational purposes in the past. I don’t remember much of it specifically, but i remember it being a great experience.
Are you whiny about the fact that they projected their parental issues onto anyone who correctly judged the idiot for calling the cops? Thats their projection, that they said.
Correctly noting the idiot should have known better about the older-than-her issue of cops beating black folk for the sin of being black has nothing to do with anyones parents.
Telling someone not to project their problems isnt a “no u,” but its cute your best retort was to brag about how poorly you read.
All my energy? Are you bed ridden? It does not take energy to point out you shouldnt call the cops on black children for not real problems.
And… Bud? Do you think that mild criticism of a single person means Im not criticizing the cops? Whats this limp dick whataboutism shit youre trying to pull?
Do you need help? The brain fog seems to really be dragging you down.
Whenever they call up jurors for drug trials where I’m at they’ll inevitably end up throwing out most of the pool because even trials related to legit scum who are peddling the life ruining stuff can be derailed by the Legalize it Campaign apparently
Just because you think the law is bad doesn’t mean you like criminals. They are unrelated. A morally good person can be a criminal, a shitty human being could always be following the law.
Yeah that’s the rub though, I don’t trust people to decide what the bad laws are given which ones they’ve done it for previously.
The bad laws that get nullified tend to be a lot less impactful than the good ones that get nullified,
The practical application of it historically has convinced me that nullification is something akin to the death penalty,
There are without a doubt cases where it ought to be applied, but I do not at all trust my fellow humans to be capable and consistent judges of those circumstances.
First, that assumes I don’t think judicial review is a crock of shit, which I do
Second, the legislative process of changing the law with a large body representing the broad national political crossection of opinions regarding how the law should change is far more legit than a bunch of Idaho’s good ol’ bois getting to decide they rather don’t care for the notion of enforcing a law that would prosecute a man for raping a 12 year old because “oh well he’s from a good family! We don’t wanna ruin his life now do we‽”
Right except evidence is that the law seldom reflects opinion polls. Nice hypothetical btw here is something evidential: the majority of states have rolled out restrictions on abortion in defiance of the voting public in the past year…
When you fix the Supreme Court and when you make the legislative branch perfectly match the will and the demographics of the people I will join your side. Better get started as most of Congress is over 65
The evidential also points to you advocating the tool racists use to free lynch mob particpants but sure buddy get all morally high and mighty in defense of letting twelve randos apply law of the halo effect.
I’d tell you to get off your high horse but we both know its an overworked ass.
Any other evidence you want to cite from before my parents (they have two grandchildren in their teens now) were born? You know in contrast to the examples I have mentioned that have occurred in the past year?
Yes democracy of the jury doesn’t work because a shitty county in a shit state in the 1950s did some shit things. But YOUR Supreme Court and YOUR legislative branch is perfect. For example Tex Cruz and Clarence Thomas.
Yeah but here’s the thing, if they can prove you knowingly steered the jury towards nullification post selection they’ll prosecute you for perjury because the screening questions basically total up to “Would you nullify a guilty verdict? Yes or No?”, so doing it on purpose and being too obvious about it can get you put in front of your own jury.
the Clinton campaign proposed intentionally cultivating extreme right-wing presidential candidates, hoping to turn them into the new “mainstream of the Republican Party” in order to try to increase Clinton’s chances of winning.
Gotta love this 'murican culture of nurturing the worst of the worst then wondering why it backfires. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and the Colombian drug cartels come to mind.
“That other guy is terrible” is a really bad way to go into an election.
Neither side knows how to fix things, but one of them lies and says it does. Being the incumbent doesn’t help either, because if you do say you know how to fix things the obvious reply is “well why haven’t you done it then?”
Neither side knows how to fix things, but one of them lies and says it does.
I would argue both sides know how to fix things but neither one is willing to do ALL the work required … especially when it comes to re-regulating Wall St, taxing the rich across the board (like they were post-WW2), and clamping down on the billions of dollars donated through super PACs that essentially buys elections.
That’s because the corporatists that control the messaging want some periodic austerity to keep the working class in line. “You should be happy with what we give you” or something like that.
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