Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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The people who work in this area indicate that domestic violence is overwhelmingly male-perpetrated, and I'm inclined to agree with them.
I really have no idea, but I'd anticipate you'd have to add a "serious" in there. I suspect that a far higher proportion of female-perpetrated domestic violence just never gets seen by 'people who work in this area'.
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Would you take $100K to have your back broken in four places?
Not the question. Having had your back broken in four places would you prefer:
* $100,000; or
* this -
Littlest actions can have very bad results. TRhat's why no violence is good & we no-longer use the 'rule of thumb'.
And never had it.
Debunker.com has one refutation.
Even wikipedia would have put you right:
The earliest citation comes from Sir William Hope’s The Compleat Fencing-Master, second edition, 1692, page 157: "What he doth, he doth by rule of thumb, and not by art." The term is thought to originate with wood workers who used the length of their thumbs rather than rulers for measuring things, cementing its modern use as an inaccurate, but reliable and convenient standard.
It is often claimed that the term originally referred to a law that limited the maximum thickness of a stick with which it was permissible for a man to beat his wife, but this has been fully discredited as a hoax. Sir Francis Buller, a British judge, was alleged to have stated that a man may legally beat his wife, provided that he used a stick no thicker than his thumb. However, it is questionable whether Buller ever made such a pronouncement and there is even less evidence that he phrased it as a "rule of thumb"; the rumoured statement was so unpopular that it caused him to be lambasted as "Judge Thumb" in a satirical James Gillray cartoon. The "rule of thumb" was referenced in at least four legal cases from 1782 to 1897, and in each of the known cases it was referred to only to state its invalidity, with one judge calling it "...a barbarous custom which modern authorities condemn." It's certainly the case that, although British common law once held that it was legal for a man to chastise his wife in moderation, the 'rule of thumb' has never been the law in England." In the modern period, this non-law gained popularity after feminist Del Martin wrote about it in 1976.
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__What possible mitigating circumstance could there be for knocking someone to the ground and kicking them until their back broke?__
For knocking someone to the ground? Assault, a reasonable fear thereof, give me a while and I can come up with some more.
Kicking them until their back breaks? That's a little more challenging.
Reasonable fear of assault isn't a mitigating circumstance, it's a defence.
Mitigating circumstances might include: being stressed, being provoked, extreme tiredness, bad reaction to medication, finding the person in bed with someone else, losing one's job ad infinitum.
Does the fact that these might mitigate a bad assualt seem bad? Contrast the alternative:
I was angry because I'd lost my job, was having financial difficulties, and hadn't slept for more than a couple hours a night for a week and just let fly
vs.
I'd just gotten a promotion at work and felt like celebrating.
Mitigating factors aren't there to excuse you. We've got defences for that, but they are they to point out - when considering sentencing - yes this was bad, but it wasn't as bad as it would have been in other circumstances.
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Awww.
Not really related, but this seemed as good a place to post it as any - about the justice system an' all.
How does this story:
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court has jailed a former anti-graft prosecutor for life for torturing a suspect to death, while his superior was sentenced to seven years in prison for trying to cover up the case, local media said on Wednesday.
end up as an "odd stuff" report?
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It now competes quite satisfactorily with channel 2 for LCD shallowness.
But I've got a CRT. Is it different on plasma too?
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The only downside is the local DVD release lagging original transmission. But it's cheap, choice and worth the wait.
The local DVD release (season 2 and season 3 at least) has generally preceded original (local) transmission. In fact is it has also generally preceded the North American DVD release (which of course means we got screwed on the special features).
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I was talking to a mate of mine and he was talking about how he had heard there had been no prosecutions under the anti-smacking law. The implication was that the law was pointless as it had no effect.
And my answer was that of course there were no prosecutions, because they didn't introduce a law that outlawed smacking. What they did was remove.
No.
They did introduce a law that outlawed smacking. Smacking your children was legal before the passage of Sue Bradford's bill, and illegal following its passage. If that does not count as outlawing smacking then words have lost all meaning.
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1 - What does everyone "feeling the pinch" have to do with expecting truckers to pay their fair share for road use?
It goes something like "truckers are protesting against a rise in government charges because they are feeling the pinch. I too am feeling the pinch. Therefore I support truckers who are protesting at feeling the pinch."
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The brilliant George Lakoff writing about why Obama should not lurch to the right
Maybe he's returning to where he really belongs (New Zealand's abortion laws are too liberal, even after the recent High Court decision etc.), after lurching left to win over committed lefty primary voters :-)