Peterkin

But very practical for the purpose it serves. As is every other form of transport. Different kinds or vehicle for different environments and uses. Of course, all of this is very much beside the point of the OP question.

Cleaner, cheaper, quieter, neater! Any reason there can't be a wind turbine and a solar array over, and the best available storage battery under, every charging station? https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/hybrid-wind-and-solar-electric-systems One such alternative is clean, cheap, quiet and and healthy.

The UK brass is fuming griping about it - as if they had never considered the possibility of the US withdrawing (After all, US presidents always promise actions they don't intend to carry out!) or had time to calculate the logistics (Those two decades just flew by!) and now will have to leave some Afghan personnel behind. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/16/some-afghan-allies-left-behind-uk-defence-secretary-concedes-afghanistan Does anyone recall Brexit?

Of course, reducing the absolute number of vehicles on any road (like closing downtown to all but foot-traffic, and restricting narrow streets to bicycles only and main streets to public transport) is an excellent idea. So is improvement of mass transit, both urban and highway. So are the driverless taxi cabs and vans (though self-driving cars have been getting some pretty bad press). But that doesn't make each vehicle more effective or more efficient. I wondered what Dimreepr meant by that distinction.

Cars, as they are now and as they're envisioned for the near future, convey passengers and baggage from one place to another reliably and quickly. In what way should a car be more effective?

I know what it is. I was wondering about the specific source of that much biofuel. Corn is an environmental and economic disaster. Other grains are sorely needed for food. Algae?

This was the slowest-motion train-wreck I've ever witnessed (and i've been witnessing through the train-littered second half of the 20th century). Everybody knew how it would end from day 1. Except this time, hopefully, they won't leave behind so many no-longer-useful allies. Well, that's something. But I suspect it's not going to be any United States of Al for most of those rescued Afghans.

Just as matter of interest: What biofuel would power private passenger vehicles?

I understand your viewpoint. You present it fully and forcefully and very clearly.

That is what we do not find out from news reports, which tend to be selective. As previously mentioned, the majority of crimes are not newsworthy. It can't. Nobody can. Prevention would have been the better option, but there is no 100% guarantee, for anyone, anywhere, of being safe from the madness of his or her fellow humans. All any society can hope do is take the best possible care of all of its children and help them become their best self. It seems that some of the nations with the resources to do that are not trying very hard. And some less advanced nations don't even pretend to. Where have I said anything against victims' rights? Why highlight this one? Why not put her in with the thousands of little girls, all over the world, who are abused by random strangers, family members, caregivers, enemy soldiers, soldiers and law-enforcers of their own nation, legally or illegally? It's nice to live in a country where the average citizen has the luxury of outrage over one horrible act - I appreciate that every day, but I don't lose perspective. In fact, I didn't say I aint concerned about feelings etc. What I said, in the context of a discussion of justice, was: "I'm not particularly concerned with feelings: feelings are changeable, individual: they can't be legislated or instituted. " If I expressed such a sentiment in the context of real and present human crisis, then, yes, it could be seen as inhuman (though perhaps not brutal in the extreme), if it resulted in my failing to take action when I could save somebody, or supporting a hawkish national policy, or voting for the party that puts children in residential school. I don't do those things. I do try to discuss concepts and issues objectively. I'm pretty sure nobody's been harmed by my citing data sources instead of repeating anecdotes. I suppose I could dig up some horrific instances of young offenders being sent to jail for possession of a handful of pills, brutalized and ruined for life. But I would rather not.

Thanks, I'm familiar with Gibbon. Is this on topic?

You're a scamp, an imp, a loose starer pistol.

At the time, i meant, but you maybe shouldn't carry the subject into the realm of farce. But I've had second thoughts: You can find a clip in the Monty Python movies and skits to fit every situation, just as you can find a quote from Shakespeare. They're comprehensive of the human condition - and not in awe of it.

I love the Pythons, too... but...

I'm not particularly concerned with feelings: feelings are changeable, individual: they can't be legislated or instituted. Anyway, justice is not an emotional or personal matter: it's a social matter. It is applied by humans to one another, on several levels. Familial justice is dispensed by parents when there is a dispute or conflict among the children, or when the children break some rule set by the parents. (In patriarchies, rules are set, justice dispensed and punishment - typically harsh - administered by just one parent, the other cowering in abject fear, even as she pleads for leniency.) Communal justice, which applies to small, interdependent groups, is usually dispensed by an arbitrator or committee empowered by the group to serve its common interest. He, she or they administer justice according to a set of rules enshrined in a founding document, or revered as tradition, that is based in some particular principles shared by the group. It is understood by all mature members, since adherence to the principles is a prerequisite of membership. National justice is far more complicated, both in the formulation of its tenets and the administration of its justice. The rules still have to be based in a philosophical stance, or guiding principle (in truths we hold to be self-evident) but they have to cover a much wider range of activities, encounters and transactions among a wider variety of people, with a far greater diversity of interests. Nevertheless, the central purpose of all legal codes is the welfare of the country - and/or its power elite, which are not always the same. In considering justice, my concern is with how a system serves the polity at large: the least possible harm to the fewest possible citizens. To that end, I consider: - the philosophical foundation of the law - fairness of the law - the practicality of the law - the applicability of the law - the means and methods of enforcement - the effectiveness of enforcement - the cost-efficiency of legal procedures That's why I'm consulting statistical charts, rather than newspaper headlines.

And who supply the bulk of both the actual criminal and incidental prison populations.

What was the Roman reaction to their occupations? How do the Roman records of those invasions compare with those of the Visigoths, Germans and Huns?

Oh, wth! I have a sneezing fit that lasts from two to five minutes, almost every time I brush my teeth. The dental hygienist advised changing my brand of toothpaste, so I did, again and again. No luck. Thing is, they all contain fluoride. And the allergy - if that's what this is - started about two years after I started daily fluoride treatments. There don't seem to be any other ill effects, so I just live with it.

I'm not aware of any existing records. Of course, the oh-so-much-more-civilized Europeans took care to destroy as much knowledge and as much of the literatri of other cultures as possible, just as the Germans and Russians were to kill off the intelligencia of Poland and Estonia. Whatever records the conquered peoples might have made would have disappeared long before an impartial historian got hold of them. It's not by accident that history is written by the victors. While there must be diaries and letters from China, India and the Middle East from various periods of conquest, there certainly would be no trace of what the North American and Australian natives thought, since they didn't keep written records. In South America and Africa, the occupying Europeans had plenty of time to seize and destroy any subversive documents.

I know.

I'll accept lazy - particularly in linguistic effort. It's easier to be sloppy; nothing depends on your correct grammar. You might be surprised how lazy some authors are and how much of the slack editors have to take up. (gripe, gripe, gripe... I can't leave a badly-phrased sentence lying around in plain sight, which is why I keep coming back to edit.)

I think you would like it. It's a very good documentary.

I was referring to the movie. The people in it are not 'chasing' anything. Contented is good, too, but that wasn't the title. We all potentially always are. We don't know where they come from or who they are, until after they have done a very bad deed. Keeping repeat car thieves and burglars locked up makes no difference to our level of danger from the unsuspected crazies. And they will repeat, if the second and third chance you offer puts them back in the same, or worse, circumstances than what caused their first crime. Did you not see the charts? Serious crime is lower in countries with a relatively mild justice system (of which yours and mine are examples btw), and higher in some countries with a very harsh system. We were already on the way to do something right by not "throwing away the key". (Now, we're facing a whole new wave of madness, racism, paranoia and violence that our justice system is not equipped to handle. I fear they will react in the American way and escalate it. The Americans intended to build a good, fair system, but the situation got away from the good guys; that could happen to Australia and Canada, too). All I'm proposing is that we should prevent more crime than we punish. How's that unreasonable? Must go! Back later.

Preventing crime might improve things. Deliberately ruining the lives of thousands of people who made a stupid decision, and turning thousands of wayward boy into life-long criminals, in order to support a resource-gobbling edifice like the prison system, just to contain a tiny handful of monsters doesn't sound like a bargain. However, "my approach", whatever that is, won't prevail, so you're quite safe.

Aside from death, taxes and wildfires, what is? What percent security does the present justice system offer the average citizen? If we could raise the security level by 10%, would you consider change?