Monday, October 8, 2012

My new equal protection analysis of school corporal punishment (paddling)

Equal protection analysis of school corporal punishment:

To justify use of what is ordinarily considered a violent felony beating to discipline students, several students would have to be acting up so disruptively -- in many classes; not just one -- that the school could no longer perform its function: a legitimate self-defense argument.

If just one student is acting up in just one classroom, that class may be protected -- may be able to continue performing its function -- by removing the student either by suspension or expulsion.  Whether beating is better for the student than suspension or expulsion is not the proper equal protection concern -- would at least be a completely different equal protection question than self-defense in the face of an immediate threat.

It should be obvious that beating kids for being late for school or not doing homework, etc. should be a complete equal protection non-starter.

Courts these days are mostly sacrificing individual rights in fear of harming bureaucratic interests.  Whether beating or suspending is better for the student (talking about one-student disruption) is not likely to be a motivating concern for them.  In any case how can legislatures -- in the light of equal protection concern -- legitimate violently beating one class of people for their own good? 

For full treatment: economic, liability, practical, ethical and constitutional click on: 

Saturday, October 6, 2012

How to survive standard (not nailed) Roman crucifixion

How to survive standard (nail-less) Roman crucifixion.

Mostly all Roman crucifixions were performed by tying up your wrists up, not nailing them up.  When you no longer had the strength, after several hours, to lift you rib cage to breath you died.

When I was a kid my father showed me that he breathed raising his stomach instead of his chest, keeping his abs in perfect shape without exercise.  Breathing through your stomach might not be, shall we say, a load bearing exercise while you are crucified.

You'd still have to fake being dead somehow.  After a few hours the soldiers come around to break the legs on anyone still breathing -- to hang more weight on their arms I suppose.  Then there is that nasty old spear through the heart thing.

If you make it to burial -- and your legs haven't been broken -- you can make a mad dash for it.  The ditch digging slaves probably wont put out much effort if any at all.  The soldiers will be too weighed down with armor.  Can't do anything about recovering your belongings that the soldiers gambled for.

California forgot to outlaw the other "Reparative Therapy" ;-)

Now that California has outlawed psychotherapy for people under 18 to remove attraction to the same sex ... 
... the state must follow through with the converse issue: whether or not to outlaw psychotherapy to add attraction to the opposite sex -- to go AC/DC; which is actually practical. 

In the late 1970s, I inquired of a random Bronx psychiatrist (not silly NARTH which seem to have no clue what gay is) whether gays could become straight.  His words were: "I can treat a homosexual so they can make it with a sympathetic member of the opposite sex."

The difference between gay and straight in my observation is whether you perceive the "self-important, territorial ego" in males or females -- apparently all painted on reality in either case.  Anybody who gets in my (self-important) space with no idea in the world they are getting in my (self-important, territorial) space always turns out to be gay.

Just as guess; maybe pointing out the incongruity of a male seeing only in members of the opposite sex the ego image he recognizes in himself -- and pointing out that 90% of the world sees it the other way around -- could be one angle to work.  

(No need for gays to freak -- if there were no such thing as sex, such a mix up would only be seen as a quirk -- heteros don't have it exactly accurate either or course.  Another no-freak note -- AC/DCs don't worry about being attracted to their own sex anymore than the opposite; one big sex world to them; I don't think they sweat homophobia much either.)

Another therapy angle?: males, not just gay males, do not give the kind of recognition that females give -- "I know you're there; I know you're there -- constantly blinking like a lighthouse.  Males need this or they feel lonely (leading gay males to be somewhat more hedonistic to make up for it I believe).  Pointing to women as a social resource to make up this lack might be a angle; just guessing. 

For full treatment click on:

Sandusky and his like -- looking for power not sex?

"... child molesters spend years grooming both children and adults, testing limits, and then pushing past them so slowly that it is very difficult to recognize when they have finally, definitely crossed the line."  From: "The Cost of Costly Punishment" by Megan McCardle.

It occurred to me shortly after reading this article that (I am sort of mister "voit-comp" -- I know all what's going on all around me) that I have been spotting boys and men all my life -- consensual connections.  If you are gay and into boys there are plenty of males -- 10% if you believe Kinsey; I do -- hitting the age of puberty, desperately looking for who of that 10% they can spot.  Without getting into it, once boys and therefore obviously men figure out what to look for, they "get together" as I used to hear the phrase around Times Square, decades ago.

The boys and men are like the young girl and the old man: one has the young body and the other has the money and the toys (car).  I was propositioned -- between the lines -- about getting into something with an old man on my teenage paper route -- by a 14 year old boy.  Michael Jackson did not need to molest for sex: if 3000 boys were going through his ranch every year, 300 of them saw things his way (and were too deeply in the closet to tell), not to mention another 300 AC/DC (Kinsey).

So why do Sandusky types work so hard to sneak up on unwilling victims when there is so much socially available?  Must be pedophile molesters want an unwilling victim.  Maybe it is the thrill of the hunt.  Rape is supposed to be about power, not sex.

While we are at it, priestly celibacy cannot induce whatever makes child molesters tick. 

Thoughts for today.