Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Boxing is a dead sport. ... Right now boxing is ... mimicking other, similar sports ... trying remember what it was like to be alive.
I'm not a big boxing fan, but I do like that there's a sport you turn up to watch live wearing black tie. And with the breaks between rounds, it does seem like a good sport to have a bunch of people 'round to watch at a BBQ etc.
Perhaps I like the idea of boxing more than boxing itself?
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Sesame Street parodies Mad Men:
Via TV Tattle. Thanks to Fiona for getting me on to that site!
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I have discovered that occasionally when the news tapes, it shows up as TV3 Plus 1 in the playlist, but I'm unsure if that's maybe something my flatmates have done. Likewise, occasionally programmes that I expect to have taped aren't there.
Yeah - this is one odd thing. I switch over to 3 - find myself half-way through some programme I decide I'd like to see, so go to the EPG and tell it to start recording it on 3+1 when it starts there in half-an-hour. Instead, it starts taping on 3, and I get half the show. If I want it, I have to manually start recording 3+1 at the appointed time.
Similar problems arise with TVNZ7 - see some doco I'm interested in watching, so tell it to tape the repeat the following morning. It starts recording the current showing instead.
Also, that thing where it doesn't record shows you really want it to (and told it to, and expect it to) bugs the hell out of me. Expedition Guyana episode two, where are you? I got episodes one and three, but what happened in the middle?
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think these people are the ones we're more likely to see committing crime - but equally it means that increasing sentences has no effect...
No deterrent effect.
Once they're inside, they not committing burglaries (or whatever).
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If I read correctly, 90% of the forecast increase in numbers is not the result of tougher sentencing. I understand the crime rate is in decline, yet our imprisonment rate is set to rise significantly (a whole lot more than 10%). So what is the source of the problem then?
Have you considered that the crime rate may be in decline because of the higher rate of imprisonment?
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As is often the case, Graeme, you're technically entirely correct, but fail to actually address the substance of the argument.
You're right that reoffending is easy to monitor per se, but how do you measure the relevance of that reoffending?
You don't. You take a statistical analysis and work on an average, build enough funding into the system, knowing that a lot of it will be paid back in fines. Yes - the sociopaths will cost them, but if they do well enough overall this wouldn't affect the bottom line.
I'm not talking about incentives at a very low level - individual guard/individual teachers. The likelihood of statistical anomalies at that level is too great. But across a whole sector - half a dozen prisons, a group of schools with 5,000 kids etc. the small percentage of outliers - which can be unevenly distributed at a micro level - is overwhelmed.
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What we want is prisoners who are humanely treated, given opportunities and incentive to rehabilitate, and who don't reoffend. Measuring all of those things is inherently hard.
Measuring whether an inmate reoffends is very very easy. If they're convicted for a crime post-release, they've re-offended.
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[rant] As for private prisons, they may help with the short-term capital outlay to get new prisons built, but they will absolutely make the long-term situation worse. The incentives they set up are obscene.
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The Geo group ... has a record in the US of actively lobbying for harsher sentencing policies in the jurisdictions in which they run prisons. They're generally paid per prisoner, so they're incentivised to have more prisoners in jail for longer. This also means that they have no incentive to actively work on rehabilitation. ...
They won't, but you could incentivise it differently. There are supposedly fewer escapes from privately-run prisons because there's a "fine" every time a prisoner escapes. Insert a clause fining a private prison every time an inmate reoffends and maybe the profit motive could actually be helpful :-)
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they could stay open until 12pm.
Sweet as. That's an extra 13 hours.
There is no 12pm. There is a 12 noon, and a 12 midnight. 12 ante meridiem makes no sense, and nor does 12 post meridiem. 12 midday, and perhaps even 12 meridiem could work, but suggesting that 12 noon is 12 pm implies that 12 noon is the 12 that happens after midday. It's actually the 12 that happens at midday.
That's a lot of 12's =)
Edit: a reference. I think we can trust Greenwich on something like this:
Is noon 12 a.m. or 12 p.m.?
12 noon is neither a.m. nor p.m.
To avoid confusion, the correct designation for twelve o'clock is 12 noon or 12 midnight. Alternatively, the twenty-four-hour-clock system may be used.
The abbreviation a.m. stands for ante-meridiem (before the Sun has crossed the line) and p.m. for post-meridiem (after the Sun has crossed the line). At 12 noon, the Sun is at its highest point in the sky and directly over the meridian. It is therefore neither "ante-" nor "post-".