Re: OT: 'Peer Reviewed' Papers - a new scam!

And come up with more imaginative and entertaining forms of capital punishment. Why not make a Saturday night TV show out of it? Get some miscreant up in front of the cameras and let him plead for his life to the audience at home. "This man has been convicted of robbing, stabbing and raping a young family. You can spare his life by calling this number: 938938493893 - or you can affirm the death penalty by calling *this* number: 82928392829"

Then read the results at the end of the show along with the winning state Lottery numbers. Now *that* would be massively popular TV show format with the People. I should patent that! :-D

So.... would you de-fund your local police?

I don't know if they do traffic detail work in the UK but they pay the local police here $100s an hour to stand around shooting the breeze and playing on their phones at roadwork sites. Clearly many dangerous criminals to be caught.

It would be better if the detail cops were actually good at directing traffic but half the time they're not even paying attention to that, either.

Not the right response - they need to spend more money on hiring better people and training them to perform more expertly.

Politicians aren't great at working out how to do this, and prefer to go for quantity - which the voters can see - over quality, which is harder to exhibit in places where lots of voters can see it.

That's because the more good policing you have, the less you need.

Of course, it does no good to arrest criminals if they are set loose the next day. Some of the really dangerous people around here have been arrested 80 times.

Then they weren't all that dangerous when they started their criminal careers. Putting impressionable youngsters into prison with experienced criminals can give them quite the wrong kind of education.