I am glad you can communicate with dead people, but a few of the living actually have stated a preference for the death penalty. For the rest on death row, because it is so awful and final, the death penalty does spur active opposition and advocacy on the side of the convicted person to do everything possible to prevent their execution, including finding evidence to clear their names. With a life sentence, the need for immediate action is not so compelling. Lifers don't get the same focused attention. I do not believe in the death penalty, but that doesn't mean I can't evaluate the actual practices the penalty incites.

I'm not so convinced. I didn't mod the post, but I don't think I would have used points on it either way.

That's irrelevant, as the justice system is not to be a method for taking revenge, but to make society a better place to live in, with less crime.

This is just a bald assertion of the purpose of the justice system, with no source or explanation. Some people do see the justice system as a method for taking revenge, which is better than having the victims of crime and their families take revenge. I know I feel a need for revenge when someone wrongs my family members. Everyone knows where that leads.

The rational decision for them is to do anything not to get caught, including more murders.

This might be true, but taking the death penalty off the table will not make this problem go away. If the maximum penalty is life in prison, and a person has already committed crimes to warrant a life sentence, isn't the "rational decision for them is to do anything not to get caught, including more murders."? So this was a flawed argument.

Unless there's a way to bring people back to life again, that in itself should be enough to put a stop to it.

Again, changing the punishment to life incarceration doesn't make the problem go away. If you put someone in jail for life, and then at the end of his life, find out he wasn't guilty, what do you do then? Press the reset button? No, the person's life is just as wasted, and there isn't much anyone can do. And if no one ever determines that the innocent person is innocent, then their life is completely wasted in prison, in my opinion. So, because we might punish the innocent, do we stop handing out long sentences? There is no perfect system, period. If we want to punish anyone, we have to accept a level of mistakes. Is 4% to high? I don't know. What about .4%? All of that said, I do agree with arth1 that executing one innocent person is too many, just not for the reasons arth1 gives.

And how do you enforce these wishes? A valid defense to your enforcement will always be "My robots are bigger than your robots. Therefore, I am not guilty."

How did you see that comment and reply in 20 minutes?

.

A nice try, calling the studies on the effects of food on living organisms "the food conspiracy theorist canon". If you are in fact a shill, the irony would be pretty thick. Because it is no conspiracy theory to say that the HFCS producers have lobbyists and public relations campaign which runn commercials and tried to change the name to "corn sugar". Facts. And you seem to be motivated to spread disinformation, citing blogs by people with no training against peer reviewed studies. And it is not only ONE study. I also read a similar study coming out of Ireland, but unfortunately I can't find the cite for that. But seriously. You bemoan ONE study when you have mere blogs, and who knows who is backing them. And you seem quick to close the case, without citing a contradictory peer reviewed study not backed by the HFCS producers.

Again, your arguments are reductionist. I have seen several plausible explanations for why there is a difference between HFCS, sucrose, and sugars in various fruits, berries, and vegetables. I don't think you want to hear them. You seem very emphatic, close minded and certain about the subject. You say without qualification that it makes no difference whether the sugar is "natural" or not in a way that seems designed to mislead people. The actual foods people eat are more complex than the molecules you are focusing on in your reductionist fashion. HFCS is not one pure molecule. It contains enzymes from the manufacturing process, and other saccharides besides glucose and fructose. The best way to really know what the differences are is by testing real foods on living organisms, not with some theory about why the two different things are exactly the same. That's why the Princeton study matters. And, predictably, you ignored it, and insisted your cartoonish medical understanding of metabolism trumped empirical studies.

With your credentials, again, how can I argue? Oh wait. The blogs you cite to rebut the peer reviewed study were rife with mischaracterizations, selectively read data, and inaccurate statements about the study. I'm sure you read and ignored the response from the study's authors, pointing out the errors in the blogs. Don't bother finding the comments and taking quotes out of context. It won't work. Unfortunately, the HFCS producers have muddied the debate by paying shills to attempt to discredit peer reviewed science making the link between obesity and metabolic syndrome and HFCS. Their campaign is straight out of the tobacco industry playbook. I can't tell whether you are genuinely misguided, or part of this disinformation campaign. You seem too well informed to be genuinely misguided. You are posting anonymously, which means you don't get e-mail notifications of my responses. That means you are going back into the article just to see if anyone responded. You seem *especially* motivated to win this argument, almost like some one was paying you....

Wow. I guess with your reductionist theory, the evidence you presented, and ALL CAPS emphasis, I will have to concede. I guess this study from Princeton, and others like it, must be flawed, because it contradicts your theory http://www.princeton.edu/main/... . You win. Keep drinking your soda. I won't stop you.

Except for at least one aspect. "Flaxseed can act like the hormone estrogen." http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-...

"4 teaspoons of sugar is four teaspoons of sugar"

It is this kind of simplistic outlook that really misleads people, yourself included. There is a difference between 12 grams of sugar in strawberries and a banana, and 12 grams of sugar mixed into water. First, the body metabolizes different sugars using different organs. Second, it is notoriously old and well known that natural sugars in fruits enter the bloodstream more slowly than, e.g. refined cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup mixed into flavored water. That makes a difference in how the body processes it. If the sugar is coming too fast to be dumped into the bloodstream all at once, it may be stored as fat. If it metabolizes more slowly, more of it can be burned as needed. Third you completely MISSED the fact that the guy is consuming these calories in the morning. WHEN someone eats could matter even more that what they eat. http://www.sciencedaily.com/re... The morning is probably the best possible time to eat some fruits, especially if they are mixed with protein. Really, you should limit your daily output of reductionist tripe. Nutrition and metabolism are incredibly complex. Don't over-simplify.

"Intent" is shorthand for the specific intent to end a human life. Not just any intent. It does not refer to intent to make a phone call, or intent to have the police show up with guns drawn, scaring the heck out of people. Perhaps the charge "assault with a deadly weapon" could be made, which is also a serious charge. Basically, the swat team is the deadly weapon, and the 911 call is the deliberate act of pointing the deadly weapon at the victim, putting them in fear of imminent offensive or harmful contact. I don't know, though. That might be stretching the definition too far. I am not a criminal attorney.

Why charge it as "premeditated murder" when it is probably not? Manslaughter is a more appropriate charge. From Wikipedia: "Involuntary manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought, either express or implied. It is distinguished from voluntary manslaughter by the absence of intention. It is normally divided into two categories; constructive manslaughter and criminally negligent manslaughter, both of which involve criminal liability." This is a serious charge with serious punishments, and it better describes what happens when someone dies in a swatting.

And you also have to account for friends and community. Friends make a huge difference. They made a huge difference in my life when I was growing up in how I turned out, and especially the mistakes I made. I am sure I was also a "bad influence" in several people's lives. So you can't always just look to the parents and family.

He is a troll. He is equating physicists to preachers and magicians. He is saying that the Lorentz transformation is no better to help understand the world than, "And God created the earth in 7 days." Bull. Sh!t. That IS trolling. He is free to be ignorant. And you, my good friend, are free to confuse blissful ignorance with free thinking. I tell you, they are not the same. The predictions of the bible didn't land an ESA probe on a comet. The predictions of Einstein's special and general relativity did. I have not met a physicist who doesn't understand that the Standard Model doesn't have problems playing nice with General Relativity. If Mr. Troll has a fix that is more than just a bunch of handwaving, and it makes predictions, please let him enlighten all of us. Until then, you and he should quit comparing physicists to priests. Not. The. Same.

Good point. The police probably are only collecting what amounts to a bar code. However, the Court's decsion did not rest on this fact. Police can unilaterally change their tactics. The price for the full sequence is falling drastically.

In 1953, the double helix structure of DNA was first discovered. In 2000, it took a national effort to sequence a human DNA. Now, in 2015, as I understand, you can get your own sequence for a price most people can afford. 62 years ago, if you told people that one day you would be able to generate a computer image of a person's face using a DNA sample, they would ask you what a computer was. And what DNA was. DNA is basically the song of our soul. It is our life, encoded. The decisions we make or fail to make today will matter decades into the future. Police tried searching people's smart phones today using a 1979 Supreme Court decision on a "pen register" recording of a suspect's dialed numbers, before anyone knew what a cell phone was. Of course, the suspect in the case was guilty. But the decision opened up people's smart phone data to police for more than a decade until the Supreme Court finally woke up and drew a distinction between a pen register and a smart phone. You scoff at the info contained in DNA. If we could put you back in 1973, you probably would have scoffed at the Intel 4004 microprocessor, because it couldn't do much. Whereas, the information about a person that can be derived from a fingerprint is about the same now as it was then. Except now you can put it in a computer, instead of a big book of fingerprints.