Sunday 25 March 2018

Bits n Bobs 250318

Sunday rolls round again. this one called Palm Sunday when I was growing up in the Church of England. The week before Easter Sunday, Jesus arrived in Jerusalem a few days before Passover and this supporters spread palm fronds in the street hence Palm Sunday.  If it's ever concerned you that he was crucified on Friday and rose again, 48 hours later, on the third day, worry no more. It's because the Romans counted their dates inclusively. Each of their months started = 1st with the Calends and the 8th was called Nones for the same inclusive reasons. The Ides, of March, and other months was more moveable but occurred in the middle of their 30/31 day months.

Did someone mention the death penalty? We don't put people to death in this country, not since Michael Manning was hanged on 20th April 1954. In the USA they do and they get themselves all tied in knots about the method by which they terminate their prisoners. The lawyers have a field day over it but the functionaries who actually do the deed seem to be barely competent to carry out the 'humane' method decided upon by each state. Manning was hanged 22 weeks after his arrest. In the US, people can languish on death row for 22 years, which seems intrinsically less humane than any method of judicial killing. In any case, Oklahoma have now approved a new method: asphyxiation with Nitrogen, the inert gas that makes up 80% of our atmosphere. I am a little teed off with the sciencification of the death penalty: there are plenty of quick, brutal and efficient ways of killing that don't involve science.  There are also unquick, distressing and messy ways of killing that do.
That's enough horror, let's have some fluffy as antidote:

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