Prison rape is not a form of poetic justice–it’s an actual crime–so stop cheering it on, Robyn Pennacchia, Death and Taxes, May 2, 2014

[C]heering on something like rape takes away from you as a person. Although yes, sometimes crimes are so horrific that our id takes over and we want nothing but horror and misery to come to the perpetrator. Trust me, I understand that. But we have these rules for a reason, we have the 8th amendment for a reason–and it doesn’t have as much to do with the rights of a prisoner as it does to protect us from becoming the kind of people that cheer on “cruel and unusual punishment.” We need to be better than that. We need to prevent our ids from taking over, or else we’ll end up becoming exactly what we despise.

Where’s The Next Alexander Fleming? Or Why Corporations Don’t Have Incentives to Create New Antibiotics. Echidne, Echidne of the Snakes, May 1, 2014

So what are the resources we need to combat the threat that antibiotics will no longer work because of their overuse in “meat production” and in the treatment of human illnesses?

Research into new antibiotics and into antibiotic resistance. Here’s the problem with the corporate model of such research:

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Governments should put a lot of money into this research. The benefits are wide-spread but cannot be captured by profit-making units.

Congrats, ‘Sentencing A Rapist To Volunteer At A Rape Crisis Center,’ You Are The Dumbest Idea Yet, Snipy, Wonkette, May 1, 2014

We are all in favor of innovative sentencing and restorative justice and all that, but we pretty much agree that if you have been raped and are currently living at a rape crisis center or receiving care there, you do not want to spend time with someone who is clocking his 250 community service hours for raping someone. That might make you feel unsafe, or it might just make you feel positively glittering with rage, which is how we feel about something this wrongheaded.

Photo credit: jodylehigh [Public domain, CC0 1.0], via Pixabay.