Someone on Saturday night told me about the BloodBus blog. An anonymous Glasgow bus driver blogs about his motley crew of passengers (and co-workers), and it's brilliant. His writing is great - very Glaswegian and also very linguistically skilled and funny - and I'm sure I recognise some of his passengers.
At last, it was time to leave the terminus. It was time to ride my battle scarred mammoth out of this iniquitous thug spawn. I put the bus into gear and released the brake. Of course, I wanted to hit the gas and smash through that fence towards the neds. I wanted to stampede over the skull of every last one of those dung-munching plebs in a crazy elephantine charge; the kind of charge that would give the normally placid Mister Snuffleupagus a boner to wow even the most pessimistic grouch.
Trampling ned skulls would indeed have been fun. But instead, I thought it best to just slink away quietly before the brick of full sexual intercourse came fucking through my windscreen. Hopefully I could tip-toe unnoticed from this cauldron of crab-ridden coitus.
Gary Gygax, the creator of D&D, has died, and the blogosphere resounds with wailing and D&D-based wordplay.
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theferret is collecting examples here. (Of wordplay, not wailing.) Favourites so far: "Gary Gygax was finally gotten by the gazebo" and "Gary Gygax will be critically missed". miss_s_b on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
theyorkshergob says everything I think about rape conviction rates here, especially this bit:Most rapes are not stranger rapes. Most rapes are between people who know each other. Most rapes involve a perpetrator and a victim, and no other witnesses. No CCTV. Nothing. It's the perpetrator's word against the victim's. If the proper standards of evidence are in force, and all else is equal, in this situation it's entirely proper that the perpetrator is acquitted. Because the other option is diluting the principles which protect us all, in all circumstances. Rape is a horrendous, horrifying ordeal. No person should be forced to perform sexual acts against their will. But that's not a reason to lower the standards of evidence for a conviction, because that would be the thin end of the fattest wedge of all.
Comments
Although there's a point about rape conviction rates that a lot of people miss - The rates are low because a lot of cases are taken to court even though the prosecution knows the chances of convictions are virtually zero. The way to increase conviction rates would be to prosecute fewer.
This doesn't mean that they should do that. It just means that conviction rates are completely the wrong metric.
I've seen it happen quite a lot, though.
*chortles*
I know about reasonable doubt, of course, but it's hard to quantify exactly what that is. I wouldn't have to be 100% convinced that someone was guilty to convict them, but I'd have to be pretty damn sure - if these things were measureable, say 90 to 95%, depending on what the crime (and punishment) was. I probably wouldn't convict if I was 75% sure.