John,
Your blog against the death penalty raised two thoughts in my mind. First I too am against the death penalty, because when they finally get around to executing the miscreant after years of expensive appeals we don’t really provide justice for society, for the murdered, or even for the murderer. In lieu of the death penalty, I suggest that the convicted prisoner be given Life Without Any Chance of Parole in Solitary Confinement. This will save society lots of money for not needing to defend numerous appeals, protect other prisoners from a convicted murderer with nothing to lose by killing again, and will most importantly provide the prisoner with lots of free time to contemplate his crime and hopefully permit him to make his peace with God before he assumes room temperature naturally.
Your reference to the bridge collapsing reminds me of a classical incident at Manhattan with Professor Zia who taught us engineers Differential Equations in the early sixties. An engineering student had been given no credit at all for one of the more important test problems by Dr. Zia on one of his tests, and he appealed to Dr. Zia when he received his test score. He told the professor that he had classified the problem correctly and had worked almost all of the solution correctly down to the last line of the solution where he had made a silly addition error in gathering like terms, and thus came out with an incorrect final answer. Dr. Zia’s highly-accented response was classic when he told the student – “When you become engineer, and do most of a bridge design correctly, but make mistake on last line, the bridge fall down, everybody die – no partial credit!”
Lou Apoldo
BCE ‘63
[JR: <1> The Death Penalty is unconstitutional and immoral. I don't want any costumed group of thugs deciding who lives and who dies. The only difference between "judges" and the KKK is the color of the uniforms. We can't depend on Gooferment to only kill the "right" people. The only solution is to say to the Gooferment, politicians, and bureaucrats: "You can't kill people." It's not about "cruel and unusual" or the safety of the chemicals used. The logical extension is the Nazi Death Camps, Pol Pot's Killing Fields, or Bush / Obama's Drone Assassinations. Gooferment's role is to keep the peace here. That's all. <2> Ahh, yes. I think of Old Doc Zia -- and his one question exams -- every time I see someone reach the right answer for the wrong reason. Now I know that, in matters of life and safety, injineers always move the decimal point on design loads over a digit or two. Just to ensure that Zia's bridge doesn't fall down. I remember it as if it was yesterday: "U in-cha-neeeer. Wrong sign; bridge fall down. Noooo partial credit." With a toothy grin. He was lucky he didn't get his lights punched out. But, he was correct. Hard lesson to learn.]
# # # # #
