In an ideal world, that's what employers might (should?) think.

In the real world, employers often have to worry about things like liability. You have an application from someone saying they committed a crime in the past. If they commit a similar crime again while doing anything related to that job, could you be held liable? You had prior knowledge that this person might be dangerous/unstable/willing to commit whatever (fraud, deceive customers, etc.), and then that person did it again. Are you responsible? Or, if the previous crime was something that could directly harm your business, would you take that risk?

For many employers, even if such a risk is very low, it might be a deciding factor. We can (and should) argue about when such reasoning is flawed, but that's the logic that would happen in the real world. Employers are not going to be looking for reasons to hire the ex-con; they'll be trying to figure out whether it's possible to take on that risk (however minimal) *before* they even consider how the ex-con stacks up against other candidates.

Precisely. There's often a lot of talk about allowing blue-collar workers to be empowered to transition or work their way up to white-collar jobs -- through education, training, etc.

So why not train blue-collar criminals so they can work their way up to white-collar crime? They need a career after all. And dealing drugs on the street corner is not a way to pay your bills, let alone moving up in the world. Why be stuck mugging people and earning $20 or $50 or whatever, when they could be embezzling, commiting financial fraud, or peddling bad investments and making millions?

[/sarcasm]

[Citation needed]

It's NOT illegal to discriminate against ex-cons. Otherwise, how it is that so many companies get away with running criminal background checks? Are you saying that all these companies pay to run background checks but then can't actually use them in the hiring decision process??

Things are changing a bit, though, and it is getting a little harder to discriminate overtly. For what's really happening, see for example, here:

In sum -- there's no explicit law against discriminating against ex-cons. It *IS* illegal to discriminate against minorities, and since a disproportionate number of ex-cons are minorities, the federal government has said businesses need to be careful.

In practice, however, what this means is now many companies tend not to do a background check immediately upon receipt of an application, but rather do some sort of interview or other screening first, then only do the background check later in the process.

At that point, employers still often toss people out of the pool of applicants for previous convictions. There's no federal law preventing that, particularly if the company gave them "fair consideration" early in the process before doing the background check. (Some states and cities have more policies to prevent such discrimination, such as the "Ban the Box" movement, but if a company can justify running a background check, it's hard to prevent discriminatory actions.)

THIS.

I'm actually NOT in favor of the death penalty. But I'm tired of stupid arguments surrounding this debate. You want to argue against the death penalty? Great -- I applaud you. But learn some basic logic skills.

Most of the times that the government has a law which requires a citizen to do something, it is likely doing something which would be illegal for private citizens to do. To wit:

- If police officers arrest people and detain them (for specific reasons), it is legal. If you do this as a private citizen, it is generally considered "kidnapping." As the parent says, same goes for prisons. Same thing goes for a court summons that requires citizens to show up (or be compelled by police to do so).

- If police officers are forced to restrain people physically (for specific reasons), it can be legal. If you do this as a private citizen outside of imminent threats to yourself, it is generally considered "assault."

- If the government requires you to give it money in exchange for not taking your property away, it is called "taxation." If you do this as a private citizen, you're probably guilty of "extortion" or perhaps some other form of "racketeering."

Etc.

Generally speaking, unless you're an anarchist, you accept that the government has powers to do things that would be "crimes" if private citizens would attempt them. The government is empowered to do these things to maintain order in society, to provide services for society, etc.

I'm sure people will disagree about the exact scope of these powers and governmental authority, but especially if we accept the notion of any "police power" in the state, we are acknowledging that the state will go around kidnapping ("arresting") people, extorting money from them ("fines"), or perhaps confining them for long periods against their will.

Should such possible state actions extend to killing people? Most people again tacitly allow such actions in the case of war -- as long as we are killing "the right people." Does the state's power extend to killing its own citizens? Well, until the past century or so, it was common to "summarily execute" (murder?) soldiers for things like desertion or aiding the enemy with relatively little due process. Nowadays we are having similar debates about "enemy combatants" and drone strikes which may target and/or inadventantly kill American citizens.

So, the death penalty is simply another place some people might want to draw the line. You may think the state should not have such a power. But it is ridiculously naive to argue that any action the state takes against criminals should be subject to the concept of "hypocrisy"... unless you're ready to accept that police should start having discussions like -- "Well, gee, this guy kidnapped someone and put her in handcuffs... so, well, it would be hypocritical for us to put him in handcuffs and force him to come to jail... so, well, I guess we just let him go! Can't be hypocritical, after all!"

I'm no fan of the death penalty, however...

Hmm... and yet in your previous post you say that anti-death penalty people tacitly approve of the current dysfunctional system rather than actually "fixing" it (which could make it more humane, decrease abuses and errors in the system, etc.) because you endorse the complete abolition which would be more "fair and sensible in some alternate universe."

Perhaps your "alternate universe" is more likely than the GP's, but clearly you also are willing to accept an intermediate system that might be a stepping stone toward a better one.

I rarely say something like this, but that is an insane argument. Forcing people into absolute positions is rarely helpful. You're clearly an absolutist on this issue, and that's fine. But pretending there can't be more than one other possible alternative position is ridiculous.

It's like animal rights activists who believe that consuming animals for food is murder. Some of them refuse to acknowledge that there could be anything like "humane" farms that also slaughter animals for food.

But I think the a huge number of people around the world would disagree. It's possible to condone the eating of animals for food AND also think it's wrong to cause an animal to needlessly suffer for its entire life. Just because you like to eat meat once in a while doesn't mean you MUST approve of people who torture animals for fun before killing them. There are more possible positions of morality in the world than two absolute polarized ones on most issues.

Similarly, I think it's logically possible for a person to admit that the current death penalty system is SO dysfunctional that it is is fundamentally unjust, yet not disapprove of the entire concept of the death penalty system in every possible incarnation. You may regard such arguments as unpersuasive -- but insisting that such a person must be lumped together with some conservative wacko who wants to streamline the process to get more minorities in the electric chair faster is ridiculous.

Why is the radius "more logical"? It depends on the practical use of the relationship. It seems "more logical" to use a radius as a primary circle measurement if you're using a modern mathematical definition of a set of points equidistant (by the radius) from a central point. And it seems logical to adopt this measurement if you constructed a circle in this manner.

On the other hand, if you are confronted with an existing circle and wish to determine the circumference, measuring the diameter is more straightforward than measuring the radius. (Fix one point on the circumference, and use your straightedge, rope, whatever to find the longest distance on the opposite part of the circle.) Sure, finding the radius is simply dividing by 2, but that's an extra step.

I don't know if this is the rationale for using the diameter in the pi definition, or if it might also have to do with the formula for circle area (pi*r^2), which is slightly simpler without the additional factor of 2, or whatever.

Nowadays, there seem to be many good mathematical reasons for defining the ratio of circumference to radius as more fundamental. However, most of these were unknown or not primary concerns when pi was first adopted as a primary ratio. There's no "logical" priority to one or the other measurement -- it depends on practical usage for calculations, and I suspect that pi was probably just used slightly more often than 2*pi in practical calculations centuries ago.

While these statements are technically true, the reality is that most people actually have great difficulties getting out of many of these decisions. How many people are actually even driven to suicide because of a bad marriage where they feel trapped, or because of an inability to meet family responsibilities and expectations, or because of financial hardships created by debts, bad loans, etc.??

Proving that you were "not in a fit state of mind" is not as easy as you make it sound. Moreover, the decisions you mention are often done along with someone else, and unless that person agrees that you were "not in a fit state of mind" (unlikely, if they went along with you in signing a mortgage or marrying you or whatever), it's going to be hard to cancel things on that basis.

And particularly in the case of a child, I don't think you get to make this choice alone. Try getting out of a paternity suit or child support by saying, "Uh, gee... whoops... I wasn't thinking clearly" or even "I was behaving irresponsibly" or "I wasn't thinking soundly." Hormones generally don't go together with a calm rational state of mind.

I understand that by saying "not in a fit state of mind" you probably mean actually insane or mentally incompetent, but the reality is that many more people than we like to admit are rather sane when they choose to end their own lives -- or at least as sane as they are when they marry some drunken idiot as a teenager or have unprotected sex with someone at a frat party "in the heat of the moment" or sign a loan on the "dream house" they can't afford.

Lots of things undermine rationality without meeting the threshold for strict mental incompetence. But we don't let generally allow people to easily reverse such decisions.

Teenagers who have kids in undesirable circumstances around the world also feel like "there is no going back." Lives are ruined -- or at least severely changed and restricted in choices -- every day through the kind of stuff you mention. As I already said, many of these choices also lead people to suicide... because they feel like they can't reverse these choices. I agree with you that suicide is different and obviously irreversible. But the circumstances you bring up often are practically irrevocable too (or trying to do so would make things worse).

The problem is who exactly decides and defines who is in a "fit state of mind." The government? I can just imagine a DMV-like place with a long line: "Well, let's see -- you meet criteria X, Y, and Z, you get a free pass to commit suicide! Next! Yes... let me see here... Oh sorry, we have determined that you don't meet criterion Z; try again next year!"

And then you have the problem of defining these moral parameters X, Y, and Z, which tend to change at various times depending on societal values. We have a hard enough time as a society deciding whom you can legally sleep with. Currently, a single adult partner of the opposite or same sex is fashionable. Multiple partners are not (but were in many cultures for many years). Partners under the age of [arbitrary local number X] are not.*

Can you just imagine the difficulties in deciding whether you are legally in a "fit state of mind" to kill yourself? Some places now seem to be saying it's okay in the case rather imminent terminal illness. And we tend to pin medals on the dead chests of those who commit suicide during war for their country in situations where it's morally obligatory or encouraged.**

But otherwise, this is pretty murky as a moral issue, let alone if you tried to legislate/regulate it.

[*See local regulations. You may be eligible to sleep with someone if your age is within Y years of age X.***]
[**If someone commits suicide during war and is unaffiliated with a country -- or just an enemy -- he/she is generally termed a "terrorist" rather than given a medal.]
[***See local regulations. Even if you are within Y years of age X, you might still be charged with possession of child pornography and put on a public sex offender list for having nudie photos of yourself or your partner on your phone.]

Well, it depends on what you mean by "dramatically." For example, the New York Times investigated this and estimates that about half of accidental gun deaths of children may not be properly reported or classified. A USA Today report said the actual numbers were 61% higher than the CDC numbers, perhaps getting up to 100 unintentional deaths in the year studied there.

And that latter report was by an organization promoting gun safety, so I don't think they are lowballing the figure. On the other hand, that latter report doesn't define "child," so I'm not sure what age range is involved.

In any case, while these gun deaths are deplorable and may be somewhat underreported, even organizations who are desperately looking for gun deaths don't seem to agree with your statement that "It is not hard to find an accidental shooting every single day in this country that involves a child." Maybe a couple times a week on average. But hardly "every single day."

The CDC's numbers may be low. But your numbers are too high.

The problem here is again a shift from possible underreporting to vastly overreporting that is characteristic of the other side of this argument.

The unfortunate reality -- as is the case with many polarized topics in U.S. politics -- is that both sides lie and mislead. Gun advocates want these numbers to appear as low as possible. People who are anti-gun want them to appear as high as possible.

And the anti-gun side has a strong tradition of including all sorts of misleading numbers involving teenagers to jack those numbers up -- trying to lump suicides, homicides, and accidents all into one category for example. Of course, most people recognize that teenagers below the age of 18 often are smart enough and competent enough to realize what they are doing, so you can't just lump all these things together.

Anyhow, clearly you have your own biased perspective and are intent on exaggerating your data. Clearly GP has his own as well. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

By the way... I should clarify that I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who play at "my level"... And if I were into playing games on the internet, etc., I'm sure I could find them. But I learned chess on a real board before computer chess was common, and I always played it as a casual social experience... And I just don't have the desire to go looking for opponents at my level. Anyhow, my point was my perception of the game changed radically when I became aware of certain bits of classic strategic patterns.

I have to agree with this. I loved chess as a little kid -- probably started playing when I was 4 or so. Always just played for fun and liked the way it was more complex than something like checkers. I also occasionally enjoyed puzzling out some of those chess puzzles in the newspaper, which usually involved endgame scenarios. But then, early in middle school, I played against someone who actually "knew what he was doing," which included things like memorized openings, basic tactics, and canned strategies. He was kinda dumb but nonetheless beat me handily. I spent a month or two learning openings and such, and suddenly I could beat most of my friends (including those quite a bit older) pretty consistently too, just from the improved board positions.

At that point I realized that becoming a "real chess player" was very different from the fun I'd been having, and I completely lost interest. I've only played a handful of times since, mostly because it's really hard to have any fun playing with my knowledge -- not enough to play "real chess" against anyone who studied strategy, but too much to play against the people who know the basic rules but never learned that stuff.

I admire the grandmasters, because they have both that amazing set of memorized knowledge AND the incredible logic/intuition. But I have absolutely no desire to play the game anymore because while I'm somewhat interested in the latter, I can't be bothered with the former. It's permanently ruined for me.

Ad hominem modded "insightful"? Seriously, the mods are feeding the trolls now? Alas, since this is modded up, I'll risk a response....

Some people like to challenge themselves once in a while. By your logic, we should never move beyond our elementary school readers.

Gee, there's only one possible "point of reading"? And here I thought that one of the primary "points of reading" was to understand what the author was saying... which you can't very well do if you don't understand the words.

You're also talking about "stories" -- what about non-fiction? Or what about classic literature, which may use language a bit differently?

In all seriousness, one of the primary reasons why the written word was invented was so it could preserve information... whether that be stories or non-fiction or whatever. Why? So that other people can learn about it. The idea that reading only functions as entertainment is a modern phenomenon.

And if you're using reading to learn things, you should be prepared to encounter new ideas, which often may involve new words. I have taught graduate-level courses at universities, and one of the things I strongly encourage students to do is look up recurring words that they don't know. If you don't do that, you won't understand the text. And part of the learning process is often having a challenging reading that allows you to expand your ideas, which usually involves some new vocabulary at the same time.

Yes, that's a great exercise, and if you're in the middle of a fast-paced novel, it's probably a reasonable idea. But if you're actually trying to understand what an author is saying, and there's this word popping up a dozen times that you don't know, simply guessing what it means is missing an opportunity to learn something.

And recurring words are great for that kind of exercise, because it provides periodic reinforcement, which is one of the keys to learning natural language and recalling new things. Most authors -- even those who write "stories" and fiction -- tend to have "pet words" that aren't part of the standard core vocabulary everyone uses. When you see such a word and look it up, each time the author uses it again you'll reinforce that word. Suddenly, by the end of the book, you'll have expanded your vocabulary by a dozen or a few dozen words. (And you're more likely to remember the meaning than if you had just memorized the word for a vocab test or something -- seeing practical usage will aid recall.)

How else does one ever get to read books that are "too hard for you," as you put it? Or should we just ignore such books? By this logic, unless you were born with a giant vocabulary or hang around with people who use big words all the time, you're obviously not destined to read such weighty tomes....

No, this paper was obviously automatically generated by a random computer algorithm. Thus, the authors are purely "theoretical."

(In all seriousness, I think this is TFS's grammatically ambiguous attempt to point out that the authors had a theoretical model that predicted limits on city expansion, which they then attempted to project onto empirical data. That is, it was NOT a study where they simply measured a bunch of cities and tried to derive an empirical fit without prior assumptions.)

The actual article is available for free.

Basically, the "about 83 percent" thing comes from their (not-so-detailed) theoretical model that predicts an exponent of 5/6.

Well, as mentioned, the exponent comes from a theoretical model, so it didn't come from averaging empirical data but rather an a priori model. You can judge the amount data fit going on in their scatterplots on page 8.

You can also see from there and various tables that the actual exponent varies quite a bit. (Even their model says it should be somewhere between 2/3 and 5/6, which is already a big range.)

In any case, I think they found evidence to satisfy the basic common-sense observation that city area should grow somewhat slower than population (though not ridiculously slower). I say "common sense," because people want to maintain proximity to stuff in the city center -- and also the fact that a not insignificant part of cities is taken up by places that aren't residences, which presumably grow "busier" rather than immediately larger proportional to the population. Also, that "busy-ness" gives motivation to figure our architectural and infrastructure ways to make space more efficient -- in small cities, there's little need or money/resources to worry about such things.

On average, somewhere around 50% of people are LESS than "halfway smart." They might benefit from some more detailed guidance. Other types of human activity usually have fantasy-like depictions on TV or movies or whatever, but they also have more realistic stuff. Porn is highly skewed toward the unrealistic, and given the taboo that many people have about talking about such intimate subjects, it can be hard to realize for someone inexperienced just how unrealistic it is. Saying, "it's not real" is helpful, but unless you have the kind of relationship with your kid where you talk about the details of sex acts (which most parents, frankly, don't -- and even if they wanted to, their kids wouldn't want to listen), then... well, the only input and modeling of sex is potentially unrepresentative.

Perhaps you're correct. I myself have read some of the studies, and I'm rather doubtful that exposure to porn causes more crime or sexual assault or whatever.

However, that doesn't mean that parents shouldn't also be proactive about making clear exactly how skewed porn often is. Just because it doesn't make you into a misogynist rapist doesn't mean that it can't also make it even more difficult to navigate your first intimate relationships when you have completely irrational expectations.

And while a link to crime may or may not be real, you have to admit that "hitting the pleasure button" frequently when exposed to certain kinds of stimulus will reinforce that stimulus as something that causes pleasure. This is a well-known psychological phenomenon, no matter what you're talking about. If you spend your teenage years fantasizing about scenarios that are incredibly rare in the real world, I can certainly believe at least SOME kids will later have issues experiencing solid interactions or attaining a satisfying relationship when they can't find that experience in the real world.

Ad hominem, much?

Yeah, gee, I mean, advocating a sort of BALANCED approach to parenting -- rather than the extremes usually displayed here (i.e., either you lockdown everything so much your kids basically have no choice to rebel, or -- like you -- you advocate total freedom for kids without any recognition that there could be dangers in the world or that they may not be ready to deal with certain things without supervision).

Yeah, sorry -- I actually chose to try and lay out a middle ground... which allows for different types of kids and personalities. Some kids may be able to trust in a parent and come ask for help before trouble starts on the internet. Some might not, even if you think you have an "open" relationship with them and try to foster one.

Do you actually have kids? Even if you do, and your method worked for you, it may NOT work for ALL kids. Unlike you, I try not to judge people and their approaches, as long as they aren't actively harming their kids.

Yep -- that whole thing about putting up a fence so a 2-year-old can't wander into the street. Completely unreasonable in the real world. Survival of the fittest, after all! If the kid's too stupid to listen to commands or come ask for help before wandering into a dangerous area... oh well!....