sabadoGigante

Exonerations, cont.

""A Texas man wrongfully convicted in 1987 of murdering his wife is scheduled to be officially exonerated on Monday.

That is no longer so unusual in Texas, where 45 inmates have been exonerated in the last decade based on DNA evidence. What is unprecedented is the move planned by lawyers for the man, Michael Morton: They are expected to file a request for a special hearing to determine whether the prosecutor broke state laws or ethics rules by withholding evidence that could have led to Morton’s acquittal 25 years ago.

“I haven’t seen anything like this, ever,” said Bennet L. Gershman, an expert on prosecutorial misconduct at Pace University in New York. “It’s an extraordinary legal event...”

To most in Consumerland this may be another cheesy drama-of-the-week. For the wrongfully convicted it's a miracle (tho'..a reasonable miracle, which shows the system does at times function).

Related: the Adventures of Billy Puta-ford continued.

Anthem protocol

Yahoo

""The bill, introduced by Indiana senator Vaneta Becker, would apply only to singers at public school and university-sponsored events, and would be dictated by guidelines instituted and enforced by the State Department of Education and the Commission for Higher Education.

Performers would be required to sign a performance contract agreeing to the department's specifications, and schools would be required to keep recordings of all renditions for two years for their review if complaints are filed."""

                              Igor S., guilty of anthem desecration (pedaled on a dom. 7th for a few dissonant nano-seconds-- not major 7th as some claimed)

~(Rosanne)

"you don't have free will"

Jerry Lewis Coyne/USA Today:

"""Perhaps you've chosen to read this essay after scanning other articles on this website. Or, if you're in a hotel, maybe you've decided what to order for breakfast, or what clothes you'll wear today.You haven't. You may feel like you've made choices, but in reality your decision to read this piece, and whether to have eggs or pancakes, was determined long before you were aware of it — perhaps even before you woke up today. And your "will" had no part in that decision. So it is with all of our other choices: not one of them results from a free and conscious decision on our part. There is no freedom of choice, no free will. And those New Year's resolutions you made? You had no choice about making them, and you'll have no choice about whether you keep them.

The debate about free will, long the purview of philosophers alone, has been given new life by scientists, especially neuroscientists studying how the brain works. And what they're finding supports the idea that free will is a complete illusion.

The issue of whether we have of free will is not an arcane academic debate about philosophy, but a critical question whose answer affects us in many ways: how we assign moral responsibility, how we punish criminals, how we feel about our religion, and, most important, how we see ourselves — as autonomous or automatons."""

As Feyerabend was reportedly wont to say...Yes, and No.

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