Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: MetalSlimeHunt on June 26, 2011, 05:19:20 am

Quote from: Africa on June 26, 2011, 05:01:47 am

Ignoring the fact that civilized countries don't have the death penalty, and that civilized countries DEFINITELY don't have the death penalty for non-first-degree-murder, it calls for an entirely new body of law.

So Japan, the USA, and India are not civilized countries to you?

Don't get me wrong, the death penalty shouldn't be practiced anywhere, but that's demonstrably false.

Hentai, bible belt, caste system.

I've heard some pretty damning stuff about the cops in Japan, about 97% of convictions are based on confessions gathered through "unusual means" that the cops do not want to be filmed, recorded or investigated by the government. They use "psychological torture" methods (according to new york times, see below). Because of this police culture they lack the experience in what other nations would consider normal forensic procedures.

it started to unravel due to people "confessing" to crimes which had never actually occurred. Hopefully this has improved in the ~5 years since I read about that. I'll try and find some relevant articles. Oh here's the nytimes on a case I had in mind:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/asia/11japan.html

One small blessing is that Japan has a 99.8% conviction rate - because they only take cases to trial if they're certain they can win. And with the incompetence of the Japanese police at anything but interrogation, if you can withstand the 23 days of interrogation without charge the system allows, without confessing, you have a very good chance of going free. So if arrested in Japan, just hold out for 3 weeks and you're fine.

Quote from: Aklyon on June 26, 2011, 04:32:15 pm

Spoiler: You'd think they'd make sure you're actually in the lottery country first... (click to show/hide)

That's been going around for ages. I have about a dozen of them supposedly from the UK, Australia, Canada and of all places, Egypt deposited into my spam box a week.

Very supposedly. There's no such thing as a "national lottery" in Australia. All gambling is regulated/controlled at the state level.

EDIT: I thought I might be mistaken, but the google links were about the scams. The closest thing is OzLotto which the largest lottery company runs in all the states since 1994, they could have at least used that for the scam name, but they're too lazy to do any research.

Jail time is always expensive and never helps anyone so your argument would just as well apply to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, yet I do not see you arguing he should be let off with community service.

Jailing a rapist may well deter other rapists in the future, also it prevents him raping again. Why do something which "never helps anyone", are you arguing we should do things which have no benefit at all? That would rather defeat the argument before you start.

With the Belgian thing, I'm certain the Belgians are actually paying you to house the prisoners because it's slightly cheaper to send them to Holland which has empty cells than building entire new jails in Belgium. The high cost of incarcerating prisoners is the very reason there's Belgian prisoners in your country, so that's hardly proof that the costs "can't be that much".

And didn't there right-wing party leader himself just get let off on some criminal charges in Holland? I don't see the right-wing calling for "sticking to the rules" on that one, only when the person is non-white. That's the normal Modus Operandi for right-wingers, it's not abnormal at all like you suggest.

Ein, it took me a little research to work out WTH you were talking about, never knew anything about AudioSurf before but I get it now. Do you have to buy the full version of Audiosurf to see the online stuff?

Try songs by "The Dwarves" for fellow pervs. Perhaps "Demonica" is a good choice (though there's much more disturbing Dwarves songs out there)

Or Runaway. Dwarves work on an inverse rule: the more poppy the song, the more revolting the lyrics. I'd post the lyrics for this, but probably get myself banned. It's on par with the subject material you alluded to. Also this one "like you want"

Wierd, they're one of my favourite bands, yet I only just now thought about how relevant a band called "The Dwarves" is to this forum.

Appropriate, yet so, so inappropriate. Well, there's plenty blood and guts in their songs, so that fits.

@Angel of Death: Commercial 7, 9 and 10 networks are all like that. Just ignore Today Tonight and A Current Affair, they are on par with FOX News in the USA except not really political.

ABC and SBS give you decent reporting, SBS especially. (these are the equivalent of PBS or NPR for you Americans).

My girlfriend loved GNW, we used to watch it on ABC before Channel 10 bought it, but even she's had enough of how long it's gotten. Channel 10 really seem to have a problem with constraining show-length and over-exposing their popular stuff, remember "Big Brother", and now "Master Chef". 7 and 9 don't do that sort of crap, shows are on when they're on and no bullshit, it's a specific Channel 10 mental illness.

How long is GNW now? 2 hours? more? That used to be the occasional 'special' but now it's the format every week. Channel 10 really seems to think that if you enjoy watching something for half an hour, you'll just LOVE 2-3 hours of that same thing every week. or, in the case of Big Brother, 4-5 hours per day of crap. And they wonder why people stopped watching (that, and making Kyle + Jackie the hosts)

I just noticed that I picked your quote pretty much at random from the thread, this was in no way intended to say that you, Fenrir, were the culprit or sole cause of the problem, I just realized why you may have thought I was singling you out, sorry.

I was reading the gist of your reply as "The individual circumstances matter most", which I wanted to counterbalance because it is very easy to stare yourself blind on individual characteristics and lose sight of what really matters.
The example I gave was one where the judge is essentially hiding behind a legal definition so he doesn't have to convict people instead of, you know, actually convict people for what they have done. It is one of the very problems I'm trying to argue; people are looking for ways out to not convict people or even admit that they're dealing with people that don't belong in our society, because it is hard to tell someone to his face that he is not just wrong, but Wrong. Or maybe I am seeing too much behind the case.

Virex you're nuts, you really think judges are out to avoid convicting murderous bikers? that's a crazy idea. There's due process and centuries of rules to try and avoid total state power and the government being able to lock you up without rights. That's part of living in a democracy. The judge would have put them all away for life if possible, but the legal rules mean you have to have something called a "trial" with "evidence". Sometimes the rules protect innocent individuals from wrongful charges, and sometimes the guilty get off due to techincalities. Total power to lock up people without proper trials would guarantee convictions of the guilty, but also of the innocent.

Conviction without trial, or mandated government convictions is a right-wing wish-list. It's part of fascism. Are you sure this viewpoint isn't being pushed by the dutch right-wing party? It sounds like something they'd like to push through parliament.

The official explanation given by her lawyer is that she was maltreated and threatened by her man (which left the country prior to the incidents), but that's exactly one of those detail-problems I'm arguing about, because nobody should walk away with 240 hours of community service after doing that to her children...

Well let's see what prison would have done:-

1. Cost a lot of YOUR tax money
2. Not stopped her doing it again (she's lost custody of the kids, so she's not doing it again)
3. Driven her MORE INSANE (obviously some level of mental disorder, making her more crazy will become a state burden down the track.)
4. Given you and some other dutch people 5 minutes worth of smug superiority feelings.
5. Not stopped anyone else doing that same thing. People sane enough to worry, aren't doing that to their kids to start with.
 
So, there's no benefit to society or the child in giving her a prison sentence other than that "I told you so" feeling you'll get for 5 minutes on reading about it in the newspaper, and then promptly forget about. That's not worth the financial cost.

I read a psychology book a while back, one chapter was talking about perception of 'normal' vs 'aberrant' behavior.

There was a campaign in a national park with a petrified forest, where it said basically "everyone steals the petrified wood, don't be one of them". MORE WOOD got stolen after the campaign, a LOT more. The obvious reason being "well if EVERYONE does it, why not me?", and herd mentality. They then got experts help them work out what went wrong, and create a new campaign which sent the message "a FEW people steal petrified wood, nobody else likes them.", which showed a lone stealer with other disapproving people looking on. This new one worked.

Saying "everyone does it" sends the wrong message. The writer of the book thought that effect might be part of why the anti-drug campaign in the 80's "Just Say No" backfired so bad. It showed everyone else on drugs and one lone person saying "No".

The PSA campaign about all men being potential abusers might also send this wrong message to rapists, reinforcing their view that it's something all men could (at least potentially) do. I missed this one because I haven't owned a TV in several years, but there were similar TV campaigns for domestic abuse showing adult males before. Those Ads did not contrast the abusers with other men. They just showed a bunch of men with narrated thoughts like "she asked for it, it's ok" and then a black on white text saying stuff like "no, it's not ok". A better campaign would have had OTHER MEN saying it's not ok. Obviously this older campaign failed, so now they have moved on to say "all boys become abusers" which sends an even worse message.

This shows you cannot just show the bad behaviour. That makes it look normal. You have to contrast it with good behavior, and portray the good behavior as normality.