worming cats

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Court Decisions are Ridiculous

It seems that you can get away with anything if you put up an absurd defense. A woman was charged for driving her car without lights while the car had a flat tyre. The woman's defence was that she had taken the sleeping drug Stilnox earlier and she couldn't remember driving. Being interviewed by police was also lost to her memory.

Remember the weird claims made when Prozac was first brought onto the market? You don't hear anything bad about Prozac today. The same thing will happen for Stilnox. If the drug is so dangerous it would not have been allowed onto the market at all. It is just convenient to have something to blame for strange behavior.

The Court found in favor of the woman. It must be said when reviewing court decisions that the government puts weird people in charge of courts. Magistrates and judges continue to give lenient sentences despite pleadings by police and the public. They are certainly a law unto themselves. Indeed, many judges believe that they are above the law. They see the separation of powers as an avenue to become dictators which gives them the right to make absurd decisions. They recently found a fellow judge not guilty of sexual assault!

Law by Ty Buchanan

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Psychedelics Should Be Used to Treat Depression

Perhaps the drive to ban drugs is misplaced. The war is being lost anyway. Since the 1960s research on psychedelic drugs has been frowned upon. However, recent findings show benefits from imbibing these chemicals which come mainly from mushrooms.

Psychedelics alter perception so that an individuals sees strange things that are not there. A side benefit is an improvement in mood. Anxiety and depression tend to disappear. Research in the US and Europe is really taking off. Oddly, although the drugs have been banned they are not addictive.

Australia is not following the lead. It is still stuck in the past with talk about psychedelics being hushed up. A further problem is that chemicals derived from mushrooms and cacti are not patentable. There is no big money in it.

The harm done by regular intake of psychedelics is near zero. Quite different from the common belief. Many of the elderly suffer from psychological problems. If these can be solved by putting the aged into a better state of mind a lot of good will be done.

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Conservation

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Brave New World of Criminal Investigation

We are entering a brave new world where DNA will be accurately read to predict eye color, distance between the eyes and nose shape. This will greatly improve police work in solving serious crime.

Even knowing whether a suspect is bald is helpful. Genes contain single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs). These can now show whether someone is probably bald. We have some way to go because of the complex interaction of male and female chromosomes.

A rough composite picture will be soon be available. This can be used to screen out suspects. Facial metrics is advancing rapidly. Analysis of insulin-like growth hormone (IGF-1) and human growth hormone (HGH) can give a rough picture of build and height.

The importance of mitochondrial DNA which passes along the female line is well known. This can predict ancestry using Y chromosome (NRY) and autosomal markers. Patterns for Europeans, white Americans and East Asians have been identified.

In the future the crime rate could be significantly reduced and we could live in societies that are much safer than today's dangerous milieu where we are afraid to go out at night. A safe world - that is something hard to imagine.

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Conservation

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Council Surveillance Cameras Could be Banned in Australia

While some countries have embraced general camera surveillance others are still cautious. The problem is that in national constitutions people have a right to privacy. Cameras placed in public streets clearly trample over this right.

Nowra, a town in New South Wales, has come face-to-face with this issue. An Australian rights campaigner, Adam Bonner, took the local council to a tribunal and a decision was made to order the council to desist from breaching the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act. It was not an instruction to turn the cameras off but it had the same result.

The Administrative Decisions Tribunal New South Wales decision has thrown a spanner into the works nationwide. State bodies set precedents for national courts. It has shown, however, that people can act locally to stop camera surveillance at local government level. One person has stopped a council in its tracks.

The Nowra Council did not help itself by telling the tribunal that the cameras were not operating when they were. Just how the council will ask people if they give permission to be filmed is unknown. Just telling them with a sign will not satisfy the tribunal decision. Signage already there is deemed by the tribunal to be insufficient. This also brings into question whether police have the right to install fixed speed cameras.

In the UK burroughs with no camera surveillance have higher arrest levels. CCTV is not an effective crime deterrent. People see it as punishment for offences rather than as a preventative method.

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History

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Ned Kelly Was No Hero

Ned Kelly has been made into a folk hero yet his exploits were very bad indeed. He killed policemen and believed he was hard done by and above the law. Like Jesse James in the US it is surprising how an evil person can be made larger than life. While there was possible police corruption affecting the lives of both, it was not a prime factor in their behavior.

From the start they had the belief in the their own superiority, that they could live above the law. Even today many strongly support the "heroism" of Ned Kelly. He was recently laid to rest in a Requiem mass. His skeleton, minus the head, were cremated. It has been 132 years since his execution.

There is something to be said about his fight against British rule in the colonies. Police control over the population was strong and brutal. Carrying the fight from Ireland to Australia is seen as a virtuous act. The problem is Ned Kelly was not really acting on this premise. He wanted to declare a region of Australia his own.

The authorities could not allow a break-away province and with the killing of police he was a "dead man walking". His gang was too small to fight the whole police force on its own. Despite his armour, twenty-eight police bullets struck his arms and legs. The sheer number of hits shows the ferocity of the final battle. He was captured and taken away.

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History

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